Probing Binary Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud with the JWST

Universe Today — Jul 29, 17:22 PM

$The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are visible on the left side of this panorama image of the Milky Way taken near the ESO's Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert.</p><p>About 200,000 light years away, the SMC is a good target for understanding the initial mass fraction and the binary mass fraction of galaxies.</p><p>Image Credit: By ESO/Y. Beletsky - <a href=$ http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1114a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14788791" height="720" src="https://www.universetoday.com/article_images/1280px-Panoramic_Large_and_Small_Magellanic_Clouds_20260729_171316.jpg" width="1280" />

Astronomers want to know how universal the initial mass fraction (IMF) of galaxies is.

To do they that, they need to discern binary stars in other galaxies, a difficult task.

Researchers used the JWST to study the Small Magellanic Cloud and determine how many binary stars are there, since they can confuse measurements of the IMF.

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