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Magellanic Clouds

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The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.

The Magellanic Clouds are two irregular, dwarf galaxies.[1] They do not have a regular shape, and only have a few billion stars. The Magellanic Clouds can only be seen from the southern hemisphere. They orbit the Milky Way galaxy.[2] They, along with the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy, are part of the Local Group of over 50 galaxies. The two clouds are known as the:

  • Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)
  • Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)

History

The first written record of the Magellanic Clouds was by the Persian astronomer Al Sufi.[3][4] In 964 he wrote the Book of Fixed Stars. He called the Large Magellanic Cloud al-Bakr (the Sheep) "of the southern Arabs". He wrote that the Cloud could not be seen from northern Arabia and Baghdad, but could be seen at the strait of Bab el Mandeb (12°15' N). This is the southernmost point of Arabia.[1]

The first Europeans to see the Clouds were Italian explorers Peter Martyr d'Anghiera and Andrea Corsali at the end of the 15th century. Antonio Pigafetta also saw them, when he went with Ferdinand Magellan on his circumnavigation of the world in 1519-1522.[1] However, naming the clouds after Magellan did not become widespread until much later. In Bayer's 1661 book, Uranometria, they are called nubecula major and nubecula minor.[5] In the 1756 star map by French astronomer Lacaille, they are called le Grand Nuage and le Petit Nuage ("the Large Cloud" and "the Small Cloud").[6]

Characteristics

 
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)
 
Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)

The Clouds can be easily seen without the use of a telescope. They look like separate pieces of the Milky Way. About 21° apart in the night sky, the real distance between them is about 75,000 light-years. They were long thought to be the closest galaxies to the Milky Way. The Canis Major Galaxy, discovered in 2003, is now thought to be our closest galaxy.

The LMC is about 160,000 light years away,[7][8][9][10] while the SMC is about 200,000.[11] The LMC is about 14,000 light years in diameter, and the SMC about 7,000. For comparison, the Milky Way is about 170,000-200,000 light years across.

Scientists believe that the irregular galaxy shape of Magellanic Clouds is caused by tidal interaction with the Milky Way as they travel close to it. Streams of neutral hydrogen connect them to the Milky Way and to each other. Both Clouds look like they were once spiral in shape.[12] Their gravity has affected the Milky Way as well, distorting the outer parts of the galaxy's disc shape.

They have a different structure and lower mass than our galaxy. There are two other big differences. First, they are gas-rich; they have more hydrogen and helium compared to the Milky Way.[13] They are also more metal-poor than the Milky Way. The youngest stars in the LMC and SMC have less than half the amount of other elements.[14] Both are noted for their nebulae and larger numbers of young stars. Like our own Galaxy their stars range from the very young to the very old, which shows the Clouds have a long history.

A supernova, SN 1987A, in the Large Magellanic Cloud was the brightest object seen from Earth in over four centuries.

In 2010, a French scientist[15][16][17] said that the clouds may have been ejected from a collision that formed the Andromeda Galaxy six billion years ago. However most astronomers believe the Magellanic Clouds were made in the same process that formed our Milky Way Galaxy.

Mini Magellanic Cloud (MMC)

New research suggests that the SMC may in fact be split in two. A smaller part may hidden about 30,000 light years behind the SMC. This could have happened with the LMC splitting the SMC, and that the two sections are still moving apart. This smaller section is being called the Mini Magellanic Cloud.[18][19]

More information

The LMC is (c. 69 degrees or) 69° 45.4′ below the celestial equator. Because they are in the far south of the celestial sphere, the Clouds were little known to astronomers in the Northern Hemisphere of Earth until the Age of Discovery (Related page, Declination)

Magellanic Clouds Media

  • Small and Large Magellanic Clouds over Paranal Observatory

  • ALMA antennae bathed in red light. In the background are the southern Milky Way on the left and the Magellanic Clouds at the top.

  • LMC and SMC rendered from Gaia EDR3 data with foreground stars removed

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Allen R.H. (1963). Star names: their lore and meaning. New York City: Dover Publications. ISBN 0486210790.294-295
  2. ↑ Shattow, Genevieve; Loeb, Abraham (1 January 2009). "Implications of recent measurements of the Milky Way rotation for the orbit of the Large Magellanic Cloud". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 392 (1): L21–L25. arXiv:0808.0104. Bibcode:2009MNRAS.392L..21S. doi:10.1111/j.1745-3933.2008.00573.x. S2CID 854729 – via NASA ADS.
  3. ↑ "Observatoire de Paris (Abd-al-Rahman Al Sufi)". Retrieved 22 July 2011.
  4. ↑ "Observatoire de Paris (LMC)". Retrieved 22 July 2011.
  5. ↑ Bayer, J., (1661) Uranometria, pl. Aaa (49) Archived 2011-07-22 at the Wayback Machine U.S. Naval Observatory; retrieved on 2009-09-05
  6. ↑ de Lacaille, N. L., (1756) Planisphère contenant les Constellations Célestes, Mémoires Académie Royale des Sciences pour 1752. Archived 2009-05-09 at the Wayback Machine Linda Hall Library; retrieved on 2009-09-05
  7. ↑ "A cosmic zoo in the Large Magellanic Cloud". European Southern Observatory. 1 June 2010. Archived from the original on 7 June 2010. Retrieved 29 August 2010.
  8. ↑ Macri, L. M.; et al. (2006). "A new Cepheid istance to the maser-host galaxy NGC 4258 and its implications for the Hubble constant". The Astrophysical Journal. 652 (2): 1133–1149. arXiv:astro-ph/0608211. Bibcode:2006ApJ...652.1133M. doi:10.1086/508530. S2CID 15728812.
  9. ↑ Freedman, Wendy L.; Madore, Barry F. 2010. The Hubble Constant Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
  10. ↑ Majaess, Daniel J. et al 2010. Anchoring the Universal Distance Scale via a Wesenheit Template, JAAVSO, 2010
  11. ↑ "Little galaxy explored". Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. 5 January 2010. Archived from the original on 11 July 2017. Retrieved 29 August 2010.
  12. ↑ "The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds". Archived from the original on 2005-07-15. Retrieved 2011-10-13.
  13. ↑ http://home.insightbb.com/~lasweb/lessons/magellanic.htm Home.insightbb.com Retrieved on 2007-05-31
  14. ↑ http://aa.springer.de/papers/8336003/2300925/sc6.htm Archived 2007-06-07 at the Wayback Machine Aa.springer.de Retrieved on 2007-05-31
  15. ↑ Hammer, F.; et al. (2010). "Does M31 Result from an ancient major merger?". The Astrophysical Journal. 727 (1): 542–555. arXiv:1010.0679. Bibcode:2010ApJ...725..542H. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/725/1/542. S2CID 119206726.
  16. ↑ "Press release on Observatoire de Paris website, in French". Archived from the original on 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2011-10-13.
  17. ↑ "Andromeda: born out of a massive collision? | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine". blogs.discovermagazine.com. 2010. Archived from the original on 18 September 2011. Retrieved 13 October 2011.
  18. ↑ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1986ApJ...301..664M Astrophysical Journal, Part 1, vol. 301, Feb. 15, 1986, p. 664-674.
  19. ↑ http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-3881/122/1/220/200523.text.html The Astronomical Journal 122:220-231 July 2001

Sources

  • Eric Chaisson and Steve McMillan, Astronomy Today (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1993), p. 550.
  • Michael Zeilik, Conceptual Astronomy (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1993), pp. 357–8.

Other websites

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