February 5, 2021
From NASA
The tip of the “wing” of the small Magellanic Cloud Galaxy is dazzling in this view from 2013 from NASA’s Great Observatories. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a small galaxy that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy for about 200,000 light years.
The colors represent light wavelengths over a wide spectrum. X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple. visible light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green, and blue; and infrared observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope are also shown in red.
The spiral galaxy in the lower corner is actually behind this nebula. Other distant galaxies, hundreds of millions of light years or more away, can be seen dotted around the edge of the image.
The SMC is one of the closest galactic neighbors to the Milky Way. Despite being a small or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere and near the equator. Many seafarers, including Ferdinand Magellan, who gives the SMC its name, used it to find their way across the oceans.
Modern astronomers are also interested in studying the SMC (and its cousin, the Large Magellanic Cloud), but for very different reasons. Because the SMC is so close and bright, it offers the opportunity to study phenomena that are difficult to study in more distant galaxies. New Chandra data from the SMC has made one such discovery: the first evidence of X-ray emission from young stars with Sun-like masses outside of our Milky Way Galaxy. Photo credit: NASA / CXC / JPL-Caltech / STScILast Updated: February 5, 2021 Publisher: Yvette Smith
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