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Magellanic cloud

Magellanic cloud \Mag`el*lan"ic cloud\, n. (Astron.) Either of two conspicuous celestial nebul[ae] near the south celestial pole, resembling thin white clouds, each of which is a galaxy[2] smaller than but separate from the Milky Way galaxy, and together they are the galactic formations nearest to our galaxy. They are not visible from the northern hemisphere, and are named after Ferdinand Magellan, who saw them in his expedition, which passed through the Strait of Magellan in South America, and one ship of which completed the first circumnavigation of the globe.

Usage examples of "magellanic cloud".

Some months ago, in one of these columns, I referred to the new supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud and said that it was 150,000 light-years away.

In 1 the tank in front of him and Mayri, between schematics of the Milky Way Galaxy and the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, dots of light in a cubic array subtly shifted their positions, and lines reaching back from each one of them to specific stars in the great spiral galaxy shifted as well.

And on the voyage home, while she lay as dormant as a story between the pages of an unread book, her ship detected changes in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies of the Home Galaxy.

It slowly penetrated that this second one must be the Greater Magellanic Cloud-if we were in the Lesser and if that fiery whirlpool was our own Galaxy.

They're all wild to have me tell them what it's really like out around the Orion Nebula or the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.

But the main activity close to us is centered on the star you call S Doradus in the lesser Magellanic Cloud, outside this galaxy, about a hundred and forty thousand light-years from us here.

I revolved and saw the direction of my movement, toward the Lesser Magellanic Cloud and a darkness there enclosing a young, blue-white giant star, a darkness I was still too far off to distinguish.