The Small Magellanic Cloud ( SMC ) is one of the staples of the southerly sky and one of the closest midget galaxies that orbit the Milky Way . The SMC and its big   sis , the Large Magellanic Cloud , have been fascinating humanity since the dawn of clock time , and we are about to see them like never before .

The SMC has been misshapen by gravitative attraction from the other galaxies in the system . This has made it quite active , with a lot of new stars work . And since it ’s only 200,000 idle - year off , the SMC is a bright candidate to study stellar evolution . The result so far has been interstellar dust . The SMC is a very dusty object and getting the full picture of it has been hard .

fortunately , astronomers can now consider on the seeable and Infrared Survey Telescope – or VISTA –   which has been able-bodied to peer through the layer of dust and deliver an incredible 1.6 Gigapixel ( 43 223 x 38 236 pixels)imageof the midget galaxy .

While the image is absurdly pretty , it is also full of crucial scientific data . An international collaborationism of research worker ,   conduct by Stefano Rubele of the University of Padova , has analyzed this datum and discovered something unexpected . Most of the stars within the SMC formed more recently compared to larger beetleweed in the local universe . The data point show menstruation of enhanced adept - organisation 1.5 billion and 5 billion age ago .

The discovery , published in theMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , is a preliminary issue of a more ambitious project . The VISTA sketch of the Magellanic Clouds ( VMC ) is put to work out the star topology formation histories of the minor and Large Magellanic Clouds , as well as make a three - dimensional map of the two dwarf wandflower .

The VMC has deliver an unequalled and , more importantly , unobscured view of the SMC . The quislingism behind the survey has releaseddozens of papersalready and many more will come from this piercing look into our cosmic associate .

check out out the incredible zoomable image of thegalaxy here .