This time of year, people in many parts of the world are digging out boxes of holiday light, untying and untwisting the strands to create beautiful, sometimes tacky, glowing displays. Throughout the season, people will gather in front of the best displays, maneuvering around one another to get a better view of the twinkling shows. 25 million light-years away, astronomers have captured another brilliant display. We can’t see it with our eyes, but astronomers with the international CHANG-ES* collaboration have maneuvered telescopes and carefully processed data to make it visible. What they’ve found could shed light on the behaviors of galaxies like our own Milky Way, and might help us better understand some mysterious large-scale features of the universe. Composite image of the Whale Galaxy revealing large magnetic structures. Credit: Composite image by Jayanne English of the University of Manitoba, with NRAO VLA radio data from Silvia Carolina Mora-Partiarroyo and Marita Krause
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