Large Magellanic Cloud
Satellite galaxy of the Milky Way
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| March 2025 | The Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of strong evidence for the closest supermassive black hole outside of the Milky Way galaxy, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. |
| 2024 |
WOH G64
The dusty torus around WOH G64 was directly imaged by the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), marking the first interferometric imaging of a star outside the Milky Way, revealing elongated and compact emission around the hypergiant star.
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| 2024 |
WOH G64
A preprint revealed that WOH G64 is a symbiotic star with a smaller B-type companion, and documented its change from semiregular to irregular variability.
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| 2023 |
HD 37836
A scientific paper estimated the star's luminosity at 4.2 million solar luminosities, with a temperature of 28,200 K and a radius of 85 solar radii, comparable to Rigel.
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| December 2021 |
Rendezvous with Rama
Alcon Entertainment announced the Rama film was in development, with Denis Villeneuve set to direct. Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreary remained on the production team through Revelations Entertainment.
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| November 2021 |
NGC 1850
Astronomers using MUSE on the Very Large Telescope discovered the first direct dynamical detection of a stellar-mass black hole in NGC 1850 by observing its influence on a nearby star's motion.
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| November 2021 | Astronomers discovered a new black hole inside the Large Magellanic Cloud using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, with its gravity influenced by a nearby star about five times the mass of the Sun. |
| 2020 |
R136a1
R136a1 lost its status as the most massive and luminous star known after being recognized as such for a decade.
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| 2019 |
Magellanic Stream
Astronomers discovered the young star cluster Price-Whelan 1 using Gaia data. The cluster has low metallicity and is located in the leading arm of the Magellanic Clouds. This discovery suggests the leading arm is 90,000 light-years from the Milky Way, which is closer than previous estimates, and indicates recent star formation in the area.
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| 2018 |
WOH G64
Spectroscopic measurements updated the star's luminosity and effective temperature based on optical and infrared photometry.
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| 2018 |
Magellanic Stream
Research confirmed the chemical composition of the Magellanic Stream Leading Arm more closely resembles the Small Magellanic Cloud by analyzing light from background quasars. This analysis indicated that the gas most likely originated from the Small Magellanic Cloud, suggesting the Large Magellanic Cloud is 'winning' in the gravitational interaction.
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| 2018 |
HD 37836
Included in a census of Luminous Blue Variables as a candidate LBV, further solidifying its classification in stellar research.
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| 2014 |
WOH G64
WOH G64 began shrinking in size, transforming from a red supergiant to a smaller yellow hypergiant, reducing to approximately half its previous size.
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| February 2012 |
Rendezvous with Rama
In an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Morgan Freeman expressed his fantasy of commanding the starship Endeavour and reaffirmed his commitment to making the Rama movie.
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| January 2011 |
Rendezvous with Rama
David Fincher stated in an MTV interview that he was still planning to make the Rama film after completing his (ultimately scrapped) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas remake.
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| 2010 |
R136a1
R136a1 was recognized as the most massive and luminous star known, a status it maintained until 2020.
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| 2010 |
Rendezvous with Rama
Morgan Freeman confirmed he was still planning to make the Rama film project, expressing a desire to have it made in 3D.
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| January 2010 |
Magellanic Stream
At the American Astronomical Society meeting, David Nidever from the University of Virginia announced new findings about the Magellanic Stream using data from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. The research revealed that the Stream is much longer and older than previously thought, likely forming around 2.5 billion years ago when the two Magellanic Clouds passed close to each other.
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This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia articles The Engines of God, WOH G64, Magellanic Stream, Rendezvous with Rama, NGC 1850, HD 37836, Large Magellanic Cloud & R136a1, which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.