This is the Swift SMC mosaic at full resolution. About 250,000 ultraviolet sources appear in this mosaic of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which was assembled from 656 images taken by the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope aboard NASA's Swift satellite. The 57-megapixel SMC image has a total exposure time of 1.8 days. The image includes light from 1,600 to 3,300 angstroms -- UV wavelengths largely blocked by Earth's atmosphere -- and has an angular resolution of 2.5 arcseconds. Viewing in the ultraviolet allows astronomers to suppress the light of normal stars like the sun, which are not very bright at these higher energies, and provides a clearer picture of the hottest stars and star-formation regions. The SMC is about 7,000 light-years across. The image is oriented with north at top
NASA/Swift/S. Immler (Goddard) and M. Siegel (Penn State)
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