The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a striking photo of the Small Magellanic Cloud. This satellite of the Milky Way is one of the closest irregular galaxies to us.
Neighbor of the Milky Way
Greet one of the Milky Way’s neighbors! This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a scene from one of the galaxies closest to the Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud. It is a dwarf galaxy located about 200,000 light years away from us. Most of the galaxy is in the constellation Tucana, but a small portion passes into the neighboring constellation Hydra.
Due to its proximity, the Small Magellanic Cloud is one of the few galaxies that can be seen from Earth without the use of a telescope or binoculars. To viewers in the Southern Hemisphere and at some latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, it resembles a breakaway piece of the Milky Way, although it is actually much farther away than any part of our galaxy.
Hubble’s “Wide View”
With its 2.4-meter mirror and sensitive instruments, Hubble sees the Small Magellanic Cloud in far more detail and brightness than humans can. The researchers used Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 to observe this scene through four different filters. Each filter transmits different wavelengths of light, creating a multi-colored picture of dust clouds drifting through the star field.
However, Hubble’s view is much more magnified than our eyes, giving it the ability to observe very distant objects. This image captures a small section of the Small Magellanic Cloud near the center of NGC 346, a star cluster that is home to dozens of massive young stars.
According to phys.org
