🌌 Galaxy
Small Magellanic Cloud
A little galaxy circling ours, next to its bigger partner.
- Distance
- 200,000 light-years away
- Size
- 15,000 light-years across
- Stars
- several hundred million
Did you know?
- From the southern half of Earth and near the equator it can be seen without a telescope.
- Most of it lies in the constellation Tucana, the Toucan.
Compare Small Magellanic Cloud with the Milky WaySide by side, to scale, in the app
More NASA photos of Small Magellanic CloudStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app
Explore more
All of deep space
The Sun
Our star, an ordinary one that keeps everything here alive.
Betelgeuse
A red supergiant in Orion that will one day explode.
Alpha Centauri
The closest star system to the Sun.
Eta Carinae
A pair of giant stars, one of them about 90 times heavier than the Sun.
Mira
A red giant star racing through space with a tail like a comet.
Zeta Ophiuchi
A runaway star, flung out when its partner exploded.