The Small Magellanic Cloud: Colorful Clouds of a Nearby Galactic Neighbor | Hubble

The Small Magellanic Cloud: Colorful Clouds of a Nearby Galactic Neighbor | Hubble

Say hello to one of the Milky Way’s neighbors! This NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope picture features a scene from one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is a dwarf galaxy located about 200,000 light-years away. Most of the galaxy resides in the constellation Tucana, but a small section crosses over into the neighboring constellation Hydrus.

Thanks to its proximity, the SMC is one of only a few galaxies that can be seen from Earth without the help of a telescope or binoculars. For viewers in the southern hemisphere and certain latitudes within the northern hemisphere, the SMC resembles a piece of the Milky Way that has broken off, though in reality it is much farther away than any part of our own galaxy.

With its 2.4-meter ‘eye’ and sensitive instruments, Hubble’s view of the SMC is far more detailed and vivid than what humans can see. Researchers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument to observe this scene through four different filters. Each filter admits different wavelengths of light, creating a multicolored view of dust clouds drifting across a field of stars. Hubble’s view, however, is much more zoomed-in than our eyes, the better for it to observe very distant objects. This image captures a small region of the SMC near the center of NGC 346, a star cluster that is home to dozens of massive young stars.

Image Description: An area of space that is filled with stars. Most of the stars are small, distant dots in orange colors; closer stars shine with a bright glow and four thin spikes around them. These closer stars appear in bluish and reddish colors. Clouds from a nebula cover the left half of the scene, giving it a blue-greenish cast. More pieces of cloud drift over the black background of space on the right.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
Release Date: March 17, 2025

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