Smith's Cloud

The Smith is an interstellar cloud of high-speed cloud of hydrogen gas with a mass of about one million solar masses. It is 11,000 light-years long and 2,300 light -years wide.

The cloud is about 8,000 light years from Earth and spans an angle of about 10 to 12 degrees on the sky, which is about as wide as the constellation of Orion, or 20 times the diameter of the full moon. However, it is not visible because of their low brightness to the naked eye.

In January 2008 it was announced that the cloud at a speed of 240 kilometers per second moves in the direction of the disk of the Milky Way and is to be expected that they will collide in 20 to 40 million years ago with the Milky Way. This is at a 45 ° angle to a point in Perseusarm, about a quarter of the way around the Milky Way from the Earth take place, and draw the emergence of many new stars ( Star Burst) by itself.

The Smith Cloud is named after the astronomer Gail Bender (nee Smith), who discovered it in 1963 as astronomy student at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.