The LMC is classified as
a Magellanic spiral
. It contains a stellar bar that is geometrically off center, suggesting that it was a barred dwarf spiral galaxy before its spiral arms were disrupted, likely by tidal interactions from the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and the Milky Way's gravity.
Why are the Magellanic Cloud galaxies distorted?
For many years astronomers thought the Magellanic Clouds orbited the Milky Way. … The Magellanic Clouds have both had their
shapes distorted by gravitational interactions with the Milky Way
. As these galaxies pass near the Milky Way, their gravitational pull also misshapes the outer bars of our galaxy.
What shape is the Large Magellanic Cloud?
Science of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Its shape suggests
a transitional form between a small spiral galaxy and an irregular galaxy
. About 30,000 light-years across in the longest dimension, it appears from Earth more than 20 times the width of a full moon.
What are Magellanic Clouds made of?
The Magellanic Clouds are comprised of
two irregular galaxies
, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), which orbit the Milky Way once every 1,500 million years and each other once every 900 million years.
What type of galaxy is the Magellanic Cloud?
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is
a satellite dwarf galaxy of the Milky Way
that is among the closest galaxies to Earth. At about 163,000 light-years from Earth, the dwarf galaxy looks like a faint cloud in Southern Hemisphere skies. It lies on the border of the constellations Dorado and Mensa.
What is the largest galaxy in the universe?
Located almost a billion light-years away,
IC 1101
is the single largest galaxy that has ever been found in the observable universe. Just how large is it? At its largest point, this galaxy extends about 2 million light-years from its core, and it has a mass of about 100 trillion stars.
Can you see the Magellanic Clouds with naked eye?
About the Magellanic Clouds
The LMC is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way, at 160,000 light-years away. And at around 210,000 light-years from Earth, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is
the furthest object us southerners can see with the naked eye during the winter months
.
How big is the Large Magellanic Cloud?
The LMC is about 160,000 light-years from Earth, and the SMC lies 190,000 light-years away. The LMC and SMC are
14,000 and 7,000 light-years in diameter
, respectively—smaller than the Milky Way Galaxy, which is about 140,000 light-years across.
Are there planets in the Large Magellanic Cloud?
The two smudges visible in the low southern latitudes known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are two small satellite galaxies
currently orbiting the Milky Way
.
Does the LMC orbit the Milky Way?
| • GMW – Large Magellanic Cloud | • W – Wing of the KMW |
|---|
Is the Pistol Star bigger than the sun?
Answer: The largest known star (in terms of mass and brightness) is called the Pistol Star. It is believed to be
100 times as massive as our Sun
, and 10,000,000 times as bright! In 1990, a star named the Pistol Star was known to lie at the center of the Pistol Nebula in the Milky Way Galaxy.
What type of galaxy is Arp 252?
8) Arp 252 — The interaction between these two
spiral galaxies
has distorted their spiral arms, stretching them out into long tails. These long tails are characteristic of galaxy collisions and interactions. Arp 252 gets its name from a catalog of peculiar and interacting galaxies, put together by astronomer Halton C.
Who found the Magellanic Clouds?
Magellanic Cloud, either of two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way Galaxy, the vast star system of which Earth is a minor component. These companion galaxies were named for
the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan
, whose crew discovered them during the first voyage around the world (1519–22).
How many galaxies are there?
The deeper we look into the cosmos, the more galaxies we see. One 2016 study estimated that the observable universe contains two trillion—or
two million million
—galaxies. Some of those distant systems are similar to our own Milky Way galaxy, while others are quite different.
