Hubble watches stars’ clockwork motion in nearby galaxy
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) completes a rotation every
250 years. It takes our Sun the same time to rotate around the Milky Way
Galaxy. Using the Hubble Telescope, NASA has been able to, for the first time,
measure the rotation rate of this galaxy precisely because the stars move in a
clock-like movement. Hubble recorded the individual movement of stars, which
are located 170,000 light years away, during a seven-year period. Nitya
Kallivayalil of the University of Virginia says that knowing the rate of
rotation offers insight as to how a galaxy formed. The rate of rotation can
also be used to calculate the mass of the galaxy. 
The LMC is a nearby galaxy. The reason it’s important to
study it is because it is very near to our own galaxy. It’s easier to study the
LMC because you’re looking out to it; it’s so difficult to study our own galaxy
because you’re studying it from the inside therefore everything is spread out
form each other. In the past, astronomers have calculated the rate of rotation
of a galaxy using the Doppler effect. To calculate the rate of motion, they
used the motion that Hubble recorded and also used the Doppler effect. Then
they combined the information together in order to find out what the rate of
rotation was for the galaxy.
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