September 8, 2015

The Magellanic Clouds and an interstellar filament seen by the Planck Surveyor satellite (Image ESA and the Planck Collaboration)

ESA has released an image created using data from the Planck Surveyor satellite offering a very special portrait of an interstellar filament and the Magellanic Clouds. Those are two dwarf galaxies that are part of the Milky Way’s neighborhood and Planck detected the dust between the stars within them during its mission. The main purpose of this satellite was to study the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB or CMBR), but the data collected are also useful to map the galaxies’ dust and magnetic fields.