The galaxy next door 🌌 You’re looking at two different views of one of our cosmic neighbors: the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC for short. It lives 160,000 light-years away from us in our galactic neighborhood, called the Local Group. In addition to our own Milky Way, the Local Group also includes the Andromeda galaxy. The LMC is a small galaxy, but it isn’t a swirling disc like the Milky Way. It’s an irregular dwarf galaxy, meaning that it’s a relatively small galaxy with an unusual shape. It’s also a hotbed of star formation, containing several nebulae and star clusters for astronomers to study. The first image shows one of the nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the second image is the LMC as seen from Earth's orbit. The LMC can also be seen by the naked eye from the ground in the Southern Hemisphere and low Northern Hemisphere latitudes. Image descriptions: 1. A muted-pink cloud of gas dominates the scene, with dark wisps of dust adding extra dimension to the cloud. The...