Small Magellanic Cloud

Bound to the Large Magellanic Cloud by a bridge of gas and stars.

The picture hangs at that distance facing Earth, as large as it is on the sky; how deep the object is cannot be seen, so it is flat.

Taken by

Digitized Sky Survey

Picture spans

about 25,000 ly

From the Sun

203,000 light-years

RA / Dec

13.19° / -72.83°

Credit

Digitized Sky Survey 2 (STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, UKSTU/AAO), via CDS hips2fits

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way. Classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy, the SMC has a D25 isophotal diameter of about 5.78 kiloparsecs (18,900 light-years), and contains several hundred million stars. It has a total mass of approximately 7 billion solar masses.

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