Something is Changing the Small Magellanic Cloud

A strange lack of stellar orbits around the core of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) mystified astronomers for decades. Not only that, but the SMC has a strange, irregular shape, and sports a tidal. Now, a team of observers led by graduate student Himansch Rathore at the University of Arizona, has tracked down the reason why the stars don’t orbit. It’s because the SMC crashed directly through its neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), in the distant past. That huge collision disrupted stellar motions and [sent them on wildly different trajectories](https://www.universetoday.com/articles/something-is-tearing-the-small-magellanic-cloud-apart). It also disturbed the clouds of gas within the SMC and created a tail of gas stretching out across space.