{"id":147182,"date":"2022-09-28T23:23:40","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T04:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/hubble-detects-protective-shield-defending-a-pair-of-dwarf-galaxies"},"modified":"2022-09-28T23:23:40","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T04:23:40","slug":"hubble-detects-protective-shield-defending-a-pair-of-dwarf-galaxies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/hubble-detects-protective-shield-defending-a-pair-of-dwarf-galaxies","title":{"rendered":"Hubble detects protective shield defending a pair of dwarf galaxies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/hubble-detects-protective-shield-defending-a-pair-of-dwarf-galaxies2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For billions of years, the Milky Way\u2019s largest satellite galaxies\u2014the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds\u2014have followed a perilous journey. Orbiting one another as they are pulled in toward our home galaxy, they have begun to unravel, leaving behind trails of gaseous debris. And yet\u2014to the puzzlement of astronomers\u2014these dwarf galaxies remain intact, with ongoing vigorous star formation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of people were struggling to explain how these streams of material could be there,\u201d said Dhanesh Krishnarao, assistant professor at Colorado College. \u201cIf this gas was removed from these galaxies, how are they still forming stars?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With the help of data from NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope and a retired satellite called the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE), a team of astronomers led by Krishnarao has finally found the answer: the Magellanic system is surrounded by a corona, a protective shield of hot supercharged gas. This cocoons the two galaxies, preventing their gas supplies from being siphoned off by the Milky Way, and therefore allowing them to continue forming new stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For billions of years, the Milky Way\u2019s largest satellite galaxies\u2014the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds\u2014have followed a perilous journey. Orbiting one another as they are pulled in toward our home galaxy, they have begun to unravel, leaving behind trails of gaseous debris. And yet\u2014to the puzzlement of astronomers\u2014these dwarf galaxies remain intact, with ongoing vigorous [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}