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LiveScience
LiveScience
Ben Turner

Astronomers are shocked to find our galaxy's nearest neighbor is being torn to shreds

the Milky Way Milky way the Small Magellanic Cloud
A photo of the Small Magellanic Cloud captured by the Herschel Space Observatory.

Astronomers have uncovered shocking evidence that one of the closest galaxies to our own is being torn to shreds by its neighbor.

Located around 200,000 light-years from Earth, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy that, alongside its neighbor the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), is gravitationally bound to our Milky Way. The two satellite galaxies orbit alongside ours and, in a few billion years, will collide and merge with the Milky Way.

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