00:00 [MUSIC]
00:03 The small Magellanic Cloud is an orbiting galaxy circling our own Milky Way.
00:08 Except a new study has discovered that despite having literally been the focus of study for thousands of years,
00:13 it's not one galaxy, but two.
00:16 Researchers say that it's all about perspective,
00:18 and that the second galaxy hangs back around 16,000 light-years behind the front.
00:22 This has been hinted at before,
00:24 with astronomers saying that the interstellar gas wasn't moving as it should have.
00:27 They also noted that the stars were moving in strange and unexpected ways,
00:31 and now they might know why.
00:32 In the new study, researchers looked at data from the Gaia Survey,
00:36 which maps the Milky Way's stars in three dimensions.
00:38 They collated that data with other observations made by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder Radio Telescope,
00:44 which was taking readings from the small Magellanic Cloud's gas.
00:47 The researchers were then able to conclude that there were actually two separate star populations
00:51 separated by thousands of light-years of space.
00:54 They each contained similar gas mass.
00:56 However, they had distinct gas signatures, and the stars moved differently as well,
01:00 with the researchers adding that they line up perfectly from our perspective,
01:04 making them difficult to interpret from one another by sight alone.
01:08 [music]
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