Starry Wingtip of Small Magellanic Cloud Business Card

Astronomy series: The tip of the "wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy is dazzling in this view from NASA's Great Observatories. The Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC, is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years way that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy. The colours represent wavelengths of light across a broad spectrum. X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple; visible-light from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is coloured red, green and blue; and infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are also represented in red. The SMC is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbours. Even though it is a small, or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator. Many navigators, including Ferdinand Magellan who lends his name to the SMC, used it to help find their way across the oceans. Image code: wismcg, Image credit: NASA/CXC/JPL-Caltech/STScI