The Large Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the brightest galaxy in our sky and home to the Tarantula Nebula, its greatest stellar nursery.
At a glance
| type | galaxy |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 163,000 light-years (50 kpc) |
| its light left it | 163,000 years ago |
| size in the piece | about 28,000 light-years acrossmodel |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with. Model marks a property of the piece’s galaxy model rather than a measurement.
About Large Magellanic Cloud
The Large Magellanic Cloud is a small barred galaxy, irregular in outline, orbiting near the Milky Way. To the eye it looks like a detached piece of the Milky Way in the southern sky, in Dorado and Mensa. It was known to southern peoples long before European voyagers, and the Persian astronomer al-Sufi described it; its modern name comes from Magellan’s expedition.
It holds the Tarantula Nebula, the most active star-forming region in the Local Group, whose central cluster contains some of the most massive stars known. It also hosted SN 1987A, the nearest supernova seen since the invention of the telescope, from which a burst of neutrinos was detected on Earth, confirming how massive stars collapse.
Because all its stars are at nearly the same distance, it is a natural laboratory for measuring stellar brightness, and it anchors the cosmic distance ladder.
What you see in the piece
It belongs to the pull-back: it fades in as you move out toward the Local Group, a blue-white galaxy with pink knots of star formation, seen beside the much smaller Small Magellanic Cloud.
Measured or modelled
Whether the Clouds have orbited the Milky Way for a long time or are on their first approach is debated; recent proper motions favour a recent arrival. The galaxy’s extent drawn here is modelled.
Questions
How far away is the Large Magellanic Cloud?
The Large Magellanic Cloud is about 163,000 light-years (50 kpc) from the Sun, so its light left it 163,000 years ago.
Can you see the Large Magellanic Cloud from the northern hemisphere?
Not from most of it. It lies close to the south celestial pole, so it is only seen from the southern hemisphere and the tropics.