"Hidden Companion: Second Galaxy Discovered Behind Milky Way Neighbor"

Astronomers have discovered that the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, is actually two galaxies, one behind the other. Claire Murray's team used the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and ESA's Gaia spacecraft to observe the movement of gas and young stars, revealing two distinct star-forming regions with different metal abundances and distances from Earth. This finding challenges previous notions of the Small Magellanic Cloud's structure and may lead to a renaming of the galaxy, as it could be two separate celestial objects. The research awaits publication in The Astrophysical Journal.