Small Magellanic Cloud
SMC · NGC 292
The smaller of the Milky Way's two bright satellite galaxies, a dwarf irregular being slowly torn apart by our gravity.
Irregular
type · SBm
200,000 ly
from Earth · measured
19k ly
across
2.3
apparent magnitude
Because its light is 200,000 ly from home, you are seeing Small Magellanic Cloud as it looked roughly 200,000 years ago. The photons left before that much of history had passed, and are only now reaching us.
Notable stars here
HD 5980A rare Wolf-Rayet and blue-variable pair that erupted in 1994→HV 2112Leading candidate Thorne-Zytkow object→
Nearest galaxies
Large Magellanic CloudIrregular75,000 ly
apartMilky WayBarred spiral200,000 ly
apartAndromedaSpiral2.6 million ly
apartTriangulumSpiral2.8 million ly
apartSculptorStarburst11 million ly
apartCigarStarburst12 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky→apartMilky WayBarred spiral200,000 ly
apartAndromedaSpiral2.6 million ly
apartTriangulumSpiral2.8 million ly
apartSculptorStarburst11 million ly
apartCigarStarburst12 million ly
apart
Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Distance from published measurements.