Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)


Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)search for term

An irregular satellite galaxy of the Milky Way galaxy, orbiting at a distance of 65 kiloparsecs (kpc). The SMC is small next to our galaxy, having a mass of only two billion solar masses, compared to the 200 billion solar masses of the Milky Way. A gaseous umbilical cord of neutral hydrogen, or H I, connects both the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) to our Milky Way. Both the LMC and SMC are visible only in the Southern Hemisphere.