Object Analysis

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way. It is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy. It has a diameter of about 7,000 light-years and contains several hundred million stars. It has a total mass of approximately 7 billion solar masses.

Located about 200,000 light-years away, the SMC is one of the Milky Way's nearest neighbors and is visible to the naked eye in the southern hemisphere. It forms a pair with the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and the two are connected by a bridge of gas, evidence of tidal interactions between them.

The SMC is of great interest to astronomers because it has a lower fraction of heavy elements ("metals") than the Milky Way. This makes it a unique laboratory for studying how stars form and evolve in environments similar to the early Universe.