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Large Magellanic Cloud – Galaxy · Satellite of the Milky Way
Image: ESO, Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin · CC BY 4.0
🌌 Galaxies · Galaxies

Large Magellanic Cloud

Galaxy · Satellite of the Milky Way

The Large Magellanic Cloud is a small galaxy orbiting our own. To the eye it looks like a detached piece of the Milky Way. It contains the Tarantula Nebula, the most active star-forming region in our neighbourhood of galaxies.

  • 160,000 light-years awayEven light – the fastest thing there is – needs 160,000 years to get here.
  • Irregular / dwarf spiralType
  • Tarantula NebulaContains
🔭 Find it in the sky

Take a closer look

Home of Monster Stars

Deep inside the Tarantula Nebula lies a tight cluster of some of the heaviest stars ever found. The record-holder, R136a1, is roughly 200 times the mass of the Sun and shines millions of times brighter. Stars like this live fast and explode after just a few million years.

A Sky With a Spiral

Imagine a planet orbiting a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud. On a dark night, the Milky Way would hang overhead as an enormous glowing spiral, wider than 60 full Moons lined up side by side. It would be one of the most spectacular views in our corner of the universe.

A Ruler for the Universe

Astronomers know the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud to within about 1%, measured using pairs of stars that eclipse each other. That makes it a vital rung on the cosmic distance ladder – the chain of measurements used to work out how fast the whole universe is expanding.

How we found out

  1. 964

    The Persian astronomer ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī mentions it in his Book of Fixed Stars.

  2. 1519–22

    Antonio Pigafetta, on Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage, describes the clouds – which is why they carry Magellan’s name.

  3. 1987

    Supernova 1987A explodes in the LMC – the closest supernova seen since 1604. Detectors on Earth catch neutrinos from it.

🤔 Something to wonder about

Will the Magellanic Clouds stay near the Milky Way forever?

See it yourself

From the Southern Hemisphere, on a dark night: a big misty patch near the south celestial pole.

Got it?

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