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What it is : The Small Magellanic Cloud , a nearby midget galaxy
Where it is:200,000 short - days aside , in the constellations Tucana and Hydrus
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features part of the Small Magellanic Cloud.
When it was share : March 21 , 2025
Why it ’s so special : The Small Magellanic Cloud ( SMC ) is one of our extragalactic nebula ’s unaired neighbors and is seeable to the naked eye , yetmost humanswill never see it . The dwarf galaxy , which check justseveral hundred million star , compare with theMilky Way ’s 100 billion star , can be seen only from the Southern Hemisphere as a cloudy speckle in the night sky .
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The SMC is close to the bigger Large Magellanic Cloud and is well seen from November to January — unless you ’re theHubble Space Telescope , which lately zoomed in on the SMC to disclose its intricate structure .
Hubble ’s Wide Field Camera 3 used its four filters and the observatory ’s 8 - foundation ( 2.4 meters ) mirror to capture various wavelengths of light to produce this colorful scene of cloud of gun and debris clear by the light of young stars in the SMC .
The look-alike shows the center of NGC 346 , an undetermined star cluster where new star are born . Previous studies found about 2,500 infant stars in NGC 346 that have formed from gravitationally collapsing gas clouds . However , they have yet to become full - fledged stars .
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As a star factory , the SMC fascinates uranologist because it miss the heavier elements found in large galaxies like the Milky Way . These gravid element are the byproduct of multiple generations of stars — something the SMC has lacked due to its small size . gnome galaxies like the SMC are thought of as archaic construction blocks of big galaxies . In that fashion , the SMC is a unequalled and very close example of what was happen in the early universe .
For more grand space figure of speech , check out ourSpace Photo of the Week archives .
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