Nearly a Million Ultraviolet Sources Appear in This Mosaic of the Large Magellanic Cloud (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Nearly a Million Ultraviolet Sources Appear in This Mosaic of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Caption

Nearly a million ultraviolet sources appear in this mosaic of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which was assembled from 2,200 images taken by Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope. The 160-megapixel image required a cumulative exposure of 5.4 days. The image includes light from 1,600 to 3,300 angstroms -- UV wavelengths largely blocked by Earth's atmosphere -- and has an angular resolution of 2.5 arcseconds at full size. The LMC is about 14,000 light-years across. Slide your cursor over the image to compare the galaxy's appearance in optical light with this ultraviolet portrait.

Credit

UV image credit: NASA/Swift/S. Immler (Goddard) and M. Siegel (Penn State) Visible image credit: Axel Mellinger, Central Michigan Univ.

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