Milky Way. Optical image of the Milky Way (down left) running through the constellations Puppis, the poop deck, and Carina, the keel. The bright star

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Milky Way. Optical image of the Milky Way (down left) running through the constellations Puppis, the poop deck, and Carina, the keel. The bright star at centre is Canopus (Alpha Carinae), the second brightest star in the sky. Below and just to the right of Canopus is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), visible as a fuzzy patch. The LMC is a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, and lies around 175,000 light years away. The Milky Way is the band of light crossing the sky formed from the millions of stars in the plane of our galaxy.

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Size: 3150px × 3136px
Photo credit: © ECKHARD SLAWIK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: alphae, astronomy, canopus, carina, carinae, cloud, constellations, cosmology, galactic, galaxy, large, lmc, magellanic, milky, night, optical, puppis, satellite, science, sky, space, starfield, stars