magnetic field associated with the Magellanic Bridge tagged posts

The Large (centre left) and Small (centre right) Magellanic Clouds are seen in the sky above a radio telescope that is part of the Australia Telescope Compact Array at the Paul Wild Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Image: Mike Salway

For the first time, astronomers have detected a magnetic field associated with the Magellanic Bridge, the filament of gas stretching 75000 light-years between the Milky Way Galaxy’s nearest galactic neighbours: the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively). Visible in the southern night sky, the LMC and SMC are dwarf galaxies that orbit our home galaxy and lie at a distance of 160 and 200 thousand light-years from Earth respectively.

Such cosmic magnetic fields can only be detected indirectly, and this detection was made by observ...