This image of the Small Magellanic Cloud was captured with a camera and a wide-aperture telephoto lens from a mountain in Chile. (Image credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava))

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) looks spectacular in a new snapshot. But something about it might really surprise you.

What is it?

The SMC is a dwarf galaxy that holds hundreds of millions of stars . The galaxy is near our very own Milky Way ; in fact, it's one of our closest neighbors. Still, it is nearly 200,000 light-years away.

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Despite that distance, the SMC can be seen with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere.

This unique visibility may have played a role in this spectacular image, which was captured by Petr Horálek, a NOIRLab Audiovisual Ambassador, using a camera and a wide-aperture telephoto lens on the mountain Cerro Pachón in Chile.…