Our galactic companion, the Small Magellanic Cloud, sparkles in Hubble image

By Georgina Torbet December 11, 2022

Each week researchers from the Hubble Space Telescope share an image they have captured of a particular object or region in space. This week’s Hubble image shows the Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC, which is a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way.

The SMC is tiny compared to our galaxy, at just 7,000 light-years across compared to the approximately 100,000 light-years of the Milky Way, making it a type called a dwarf galaxy. It is also one of our nearest neighbors and a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, meaning it is gravitationally bound to our galaxy. It can be seen with the naked eye, along with its companion the Large Magellanic Cloud, mostly visible from the southern hemisphere.

Image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a small portion of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). — This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a small portion of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is a dwarf galaxy and one of the Milky Way’s nearest neighbors, lying only about 200,000 light-years from Earth. It makes a pair with the Large Magellanic Cloud, and both objects are best seen from the Southern Hemisphere but are visible from some northern latitudes as well. ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Nota, G. De Marchi

This image is just a small part of the SMC. “The Small Magellanic Cloud contains hundreds of millions of stars, but this image focuses on just a small fraction of them,” Hubble scientists write. “These stars comprise the open cluster NGC 376, which has a total mass of only about 3,400 times that of the Sun. Open clusters, as the name suggests, are loosely bound and sparsely populated.”

The SMC was the site of one of the most important discoveries in the history of astronomy, as pioneer Henrietta Leavitt observed a type of variable star called a Cepheid variable there. Leavitt showed that these stars have a set relationship between how brightly they glow and how often they pulse, allowing researchers to tell how bright a star would be based on its pulsing. By comparing a Cepheid variable’s luminosity with its observed brightness, researchers can accurately tell how far away it is. This means these stars can be used as distance markers, allowing astronomers to gauge distances in the universe.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Tech News

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…

Space

See the sparkling Terzan 12 globular cluster in new Hubble image

This colorful image of the globular star cluster Terzan 12 is a spectacular example of how dust in space affects starlight coming from background objects.

A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a stunning field of thousands of stars, part of a globular star cluster called Terzan 12. These groups of stars are bound together by gravity, in a packed configuration that is roughly spherical. This particular cluster is located within the Milky Way, in the constellation of Sagittarius, and is around 15,000 light-years away from us here on Earth.

This colorful image of the globular star cluster Terzan 12 is a spectacular example of how dust in space affects starlight coming from background objects. NASA, ESA, ESA/Hubble, Roger Cohen (RU)

Space

Hubble captures a sparkling cloud galaxy located right next door

The galaxy ESO 300-16 looms over this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

An image from the Hubble Space Telescope shared this week by NASA shows a nearby galaxy, ESO 300-16. Unlike our Milky Way, which is a type called a spiral galaxy with a clear central bulge and defined spiral arms reaching out from its center, this neighborhood galaxy is loose and diffuse, looking more like a spattering of stars than anything with a clear structure. Hubble scientists describe it as a "sparkling cloud."

The galaxy is a type called an irregular galaxy, due to its lack of clear shape. Its stars clump together in a soft bubble form, and it is located nearly 29 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Eridanus.

Space

Hubble images our ghostly neighborhood galaxy NGC 6684

The lenticular galaxy NGC 6684 bathes this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in a pale light. Captured with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, this galaxy is around 44 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pavo. Pavo – the Latin name for peacock – is a constellation in the southern sky and one of four constellations collectively known as the Southern Birds.

Scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope release an image each week that the telescope has taken recently, and this week's image shows a lenticular galaxy located 44 million light-years away. Known as NGC 6684, this galaxy in the constellation of Pavo, which can be seen from the Southern Hemisphere.

Lenticular galaxies are different from spiral galaxies such as our Milky Way. Instead of distinct spiral arms reaching out from a center, lenticular galaxies are more amorphous and diffuse, but with a central disk. This type of galaxy is halfway between a spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy, which is smooth and almost featureless. Lenticular galaxies don't have much interstellar matter, or dust and gas floating between stars, so there isn't much material for the creation of new stars and the rate of star formation within these galaxies is low. The lack of structure in this type of galaxy is emphasized by its absence of dust lanes, making it look even more "ghostly," as Hubble scientists dub it.