Colourful clouds of a nearby neighbour
Say hello to one of the Milky Way’s neighbours! Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week 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 neighbouring 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 some latitudes in the northern hemisphere, the SMC resembles a piece of the Milky Way that has broken off, though in reality it’s much farther away than any part of our own galaxy.
With its 2.4-metre ‘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 multicoloured 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 centre 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 colours; closer stars shine with a bright glow and four thin spikes around them. These closer stars appear in both bluish and reddish colours. 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.]
Links
Credit:ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
About the Image
Id: | potw2511a |
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Type: | Observation |
Release date: | 17 March 2025, 06:00 |
Size: | 4008 x 4081 px |
About the Object
Name: | SMC 13 |
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Distance: | 200000 light years |
Constellation: | Tucana |
Category: | Galaxies |
Image Formats
Coordinates
Position (RA): | 0 59 43.66 |
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Position (Dec): | -72° 10' 26.12" |
Field of view: | 2.64 x 2.69 arcminutes |
Orientation: | North is 181.5° left of vertical |
Colours & filters
Band | Wavelength | Telescope |
---|---|---|
Ultraviolet UV | 275 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
WFC3 |
Optical U | 336 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
WFC3 |
Optical g | 475 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
WFC3 |
Optical I | 814 nm |
Hubble Space Telescope
WFC3 |