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

Astronomers have discovered that the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy near 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 perceptions of the Small Magellanic Cloud and suggests it may need to be reclassified if the two objects are indeed separate galaxies. The research is set to be published in The Astrophysical Journal and is currently available on arXiv.