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The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way. [5] Classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy , the SMC has a D 25 isophotal diameter of about 5.78 kiloparsecs (18,900 light-years), [ 1 ] [ 3 ] and contains several hundred million stars. [ 5 ]
The Large Magellanic Cloud and its neighbour and relative, the Small Magellanic Cloud, are conspicuous objects in the southern hemisphere, looking like separated pieces of the Milky Way to the naked eye. Roughly 21° apart in the night sky, the true distance between them is roughly 75,000 light-years.
There are 61 small galaxies confirmed to be within 420 kiloparsecs (1.4 million light-years) of the Milky Way, [2] but not all of them are necessarily in orbit, and some may themselves be in orbit of other satellite galaxies. The only ones visible to the naked eye are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which have been observed since prehistory.
Three of the closest dwarf irregular satellites of the Milky Way include the Small Magellanic Cloud, Canis Major Dwarf, and the newly discovered Antlia 2. The Large Magellanic Cloud, the Milky Way's largest satellite galaxy, and fourth largest in the Local Group. This satellite is also classified as a transition type between a dwarf spiral and ...
The Large Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, as is another nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud. Both are smaller than our galaxy and offer different galactic ...
This makes it feasible to use them as indicators of distance. Recently, they have been used to give direct distance estimates to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), Andromeda Galaxy and Triangulum Galaxy. Eclipsing binaries offer a direct method to gauge the distance to galaxies to a new improved 5% level of accuracy ...
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a dwarf galaxy and satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. [7] At a distance of around 50 kiloparsecs (163,000 light-years), [2] [8] [9] [10] the LMC is the second- or third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal (c. 16 kiloparsecs (52,000 light-years) away) and the possible dwarf irregular galaxy called the Canis Major Overdensity.
Large Magellanic Cloud: antiquity–1994: 0.163 Mly This is the upper bound, as it is the nearest galaxy observable with the naked eye. [citation needed] Small Magellanic Cloud: 1913–1914: 0.197 Mly This was the first intergalactic distance measured. In 1913, Ejnar Hertzsprung measures the distance to SMC using Cepheid variables. In 1914, he ...