January 24, 1998 crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during their famous voyage around the world. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects, not visible to northern hemisphere dwellers , are now known as the Clouds of Magellan. These star clouds are small irregular galaxies , satellites of our larger Milky Way spiral galaxy . The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) pictured above is only about 180,000 light-years distant - the only known galaxy closer is the Sagittarius Dwarf . Both the LMC and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) are joined to the Milky Way by a stream of cold hydrogen gas. An unusual effect called gravitational lensing has recently been detected in a few LMC stars , and there is hope this could tell us important information about the true composition of our universe. 麥哲倫及其船員在著名的環球航行中，有非常多的時間觀察南半球的星空。 因此，現在南天二兩個瀰漫、北半球住居不得見的雲狀天體，就稱為是麥哲倫星雲。 這二團“星雲”是我們銀河系（大螺旋星系）的伴星系，其分類為不規則小星系。 上圖所呈現的大麥哲倫星系，距離我們大約18萬光年，唯一已知比它還近的星系，是人馬矮星系。 大麥哲倫星系和小麥哲倫星系，都有橋狀的冷氫氣流與銀河系相連。 最近在一些大麥哲倫星系的恆星中，發現了一種名為重力透鏡效應的不尋常現象，這種現象可能含有關於我們宇宙真正組成的重要信息。 Tomorrow's picture: The Small Cloud Of Magellan Archive | Index | Search | Calendar | Glossary | Education | About APOD Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff ( MTU ) & Jerry Bonnell ( USRA )
NASA Technical Rep.: Jay Norris . Specific rights apply .
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