What is the Small Magellanic Cloud?
The Small Magellanic Cloud and its bigger brother, the Large Magellanic Cloud, are actually small irregular galaxies orbiting our own larger Milky Way. They are members of the Local Group, a collection of more than 30 galaxies to which our Milky Way belongs. Almost unknown to casual observers in the Northern Hemisphere, the Magellanic Clouds are seen in the southern sky. The Small Magellanic Cloud is about 210,000 light-years away and contains many hot, young stars, indicating that the galaxy has undergone a recent period of star formation. The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reported seeing the Magellanic Clouds from the South Pacific during the early 1500s. • 2. What triggered the recent star formation in the Small Magellanic Cloud? Astronomers are not sure. There are not many places in the Small Magellanic Cloud with very recent star formation. The Hubble observations are part of a bigger project whose goal is to determine what triggered the more recent star formation. Astron
The Small Magellanic Cloud is a nearby dwarf galaxy, located only 200,000 light years from the Milky Way, about two galactic diameters distant. It is visible from latitudes south of about 15°S. The Small Magellanic Cloud is accompanied by the Large Magellanic Cloud, separated in the sky by about 25°, which corresponds to about 75,000 light-years in actual distance. The Magellanic Clouds look like detached pieces of the Milky Way. They are among the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye, the most distant being the Triangulum Galaxy at 3 million light years. The first Europeans to observe the Magellanic clouds were on the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, the Spanish explorer, while he was circumnavigating the globe in 1519-1522. The “clouds” look vaguely like small glittering clouds in the night sky, but they are actually galaxies. Until the discovery of the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy in 1994, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds were thought to be the galax
The Small Magellanic Cloud is a nearby dwarf galaxy, located only 200,000 light years from the Milky Way, about two galactic diameters distant. It is visible from latitudes south of about 15°S. The Small Magellanic Cloud is accompanied by the Large Magellanic Cloud, separated in the sky by about 25°, which corresponds to about 75,000 light-years in actual distance. The Magellanic Clouds look like detached pieces of the Milky Way. They are among the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye, the most distant being the Triangulum Galaxy at 3 million light years. The first Europeans to observe the Magellanic clouds were on the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, the Spanish explorer, while he was circumnavigating the globe in 1519-1522. The “clouds” look vaguely like small glittering clouds in the night sky, but they are actually galaxies. Until the discovery of the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy in 1994, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds were thought to be the gal
