Hubble Telescope witnesses Milky Way strip its galactic neighbor of gas

In a pink haze of space, a galaxy near center top shoots three blue lines downward left, to a gaseous smudge labeled LMC Halo.

In its galactic neighborhood, the Milky Way can be something of a bully.

Our galaxy's two closest neighbors are two dwarf galaxies known as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Being much smaller in mass (the LMC is 10% the mass of the Milky Way, for instance), these nearby galaxies are largely at the gravitational whim of ours.