January - The Small Magellanic Cloud

One of our closest neighbours, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), is a dwarf irregular galaxy 200000 light-years away. In the southern hemisphere, the SMC can be seen with the naked eye. The bright globular star cluster, 47 Tucanae, appears to the right and is much closer to the Earth than the SMC, lying only about 17000 light-years away. This image was taken with the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory.