This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows part of the Small Magellanic Cloud. (Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray)
What is it: The Small Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy.
Location: 200,000 light years away, in the constellations Tucana and Hydra.
When published: March 21, 2025
Why it matters: The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of our galaxy's closest neighbors and can be seen with the naked eye, although most people don't notice it. This dwarf galaxy contains only a few hundred million stars, compared to the Milky Way's 100 billion stars, and is only visible from the Southern Hemisphere as a cloudy patch in the night sky.
The Small Magellanic Cloud is located near the larger Large Magellanic Cloud and is best seen from November to January—unless, of course, you're the Hubble Space Telescope, which recently zoomed in on the Small Magellanic Cloud to show off its complex structure.
Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 used four filters and the observatory's 8-foot (2.4-meter) mirror to capture different wavelengths of light to create this bright view of clouds of gas and dust illuminated by the light of young stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
This image shows the center of NGC 346, an open star cluster where new stars are forming. Previous studies have found about 2,500 young stars in NGC 346 that formed from gravitationally collapsing gas clouds. However, they have yet to reach the stage of full-fledged stars.
As a star factory, the SMC attracts astronomers because it lacks the heavier elements found in larger galaxies like the Milky Way. These heavier elements are the byproducts of multiple generations of stars, and the SMC's lack of them is due to its small size. Dwarf galaxies like the SMC are thought to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. The SMC thus represents a unique and very close example of what happened in the early universe.
More amazing space images can be found in our Space Photo of the Week archive.
TOPICS space photo of the week
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