The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy a mere 200,000 light years from our Milky Way galaxy. It is classified as an "irregular" galaxy due its being perturbed by its close association with both the Milky Way and the much closer Large Magellanic Cloud. To illustrate, the width of the SMC and Milky Way are 7,000 light years, and 120,000 light years, respectively. And, the mass of the Milky Way is an estimated 400 billion solar masses, compared to an estimated mass of the SMC of only 7 billion solar masses.
The SMC, and its neighbor the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), are both visible only in the very southern regions of the northern hemisphere. They are immediately apparent to observers in the southern hemisphere, and were described by several southern tribes and peoples long before they were observed by Magellan's crew during his circumnavigation of the Earth (1519-1522). The LMC and SMC form a beautiful pair of fuzzy patches in the sky. It was not until the 1930s that these "clouds" were resolved into stars, and their true identity as galaxies was confirmed. The LMC and SMC went by several names over the years, and it was more than 200 years after Magellan saw them that they commonly bore his name.
Small Magellanic Cloud
Date Taken:August 26, 2014
Location Taken:Siding Spring Obsevatory, NSW Australia
Conditions of Location: Equipment Used:Takahashi FSQ106 4" apochromatic refractor, SBIG STL11000 camera
Processing Used:8 x 3 minutes LRGB, for a total exposure of 96 minutes, processed in Maxim DL and Photoshop
Distance from Location:200,000 light years
Constellation:Tucana (the "toucan")
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