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Credit & Copyright: Josö Mtanous
Explanation:
What is the Small Magellanic Cloud?
It has turned out to be a galaxy.
People who have wondered about this little fuzzy patch in the southern sky included
Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan
and his crew, who had plenty
of time to study the unfamiliar night sky of the south during the
first circumnavigation of
planet Earth in the early 1500s.
As a result, two
celestial wonders
easily visible for southern hemisphere
skygazers are now known in
Western culture
as the Clouds of Magellan.
Within the past
100 years,
research has shown that these cosmic clouds are dwarf
irregular galaxies,
satellites of our larger spiral Milky Way Galaxy.
The Small Magellanic Cloud
actually spans 15,000 light-years or so
and contains several hundred million stars.
About 210,000 light-years away in the constellation of the
Tucan
(Tucana),
it is more distant than other known
Milky Way satellite galaxies, including the
Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy and the
Large Magellanic Cloud.
This
sharp image also includes the foreground globular
star cluster
47 Tucanae on the right.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: SMC - small Magellanic cloud
Publications with words: SMC - small Magellanic cloud
See also: