Our Comapnion Galaxies
the Magellanic Clouds
A photo of our companion galaxies
by our co-Editor-in-Chief Lizard O Oz
The Magellanic Clouds
the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)
Credit: Zdeněk Bardon/ESO
Companions to the Milky Way
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)
ESA/Hubble and Digitized Sky Survey 2
A couple of Magellanic clouds I photgraphed in 2012 with an unguided camera.
The bright blob on the far left is Canopus in Carina, the second brightest star after Sirius in Canis Major.
The bright "star" to the right of the small Magellanic cloud is NGC 104 aka 47 Tucanae, the second brightest globular cluster.
The bright star near the top of the picture directly above the small Magellanic cloud is the binary star Achernar or Alpha Eridani.
Taken at Coramba, 30.1986°S, 152.9972°E with an Olympus OM-D E-M5 12mm F3.5 ISO:8000 20 seconds unguided.
10 Oct 2012 12:59 am AEDT which was 9 Oct 2012 13:59 UTC.
The Magellanic Clouds, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, are small companion galaxies to our own milky way. The LMC is the closer of the two at 158,200 light years distance. The SMC is 199,000 light years away. There are numerous other dwarf galaxies gravitationally bound to the Milky Way (some even closer) but the Magellanic clouds are the easiest to see (especially from the southern hemisphere).
Location of the gravitationally bound companion galaxies to the Milky Way.
Original: AndrewRT Vector: Slashme, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons
