Large Magellanic Cloud

Also known as LMC

irregular galaxy, satellite of the Milky Way

AI overview

The Large Magellanic Cloud is an irregular galaxy that orbits the Milky Way as one of its satellite galaxies. It matters to astronomers because studying it helps us understand how galaxies interact and evolve, and it serves as a nearby laboratory for observing stellar processes and cosmic phenomena.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Distance from Earth: 50.12
Radius: 2.1
Mass: 13000000000
Image: Large.mc.arp.750pix.jpg

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Commons category: Large Magellanic Cloud
catalog code: 2FHL J0526.6-6825e
redshift: 0.00093
galaxy morphological type: SB(s)m
apparent magnitude: 0.4
right ascension: 80.89417
declination: -69.75611
radial velocity: 262.2
time of discovery or invention: 0964-00-00
metallicity: -0.55
absolute magnitude: -18.5
right ascension component of proper motion: 1.910
declination component of proper motion: 0.229
short name: VMO

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Article

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a dwarf galaxy and satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of around 50 kiloparsecs (163,000 light-years), the LMC is the second- or third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal (c. 16 kiloparsecs (52,000 light-years) away) and the possible dwarf irregular galaxy called the Canis Major Overdensity. It is about 9.86 kiloparsecs (32,200 light-years) across, and has roughly one-hundredth the mass of the Milky Way making it the fourth-largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Milky Way, and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33).

The LMC is classified as a Magellanic spiral. It contains a stellar bar that is geometrically off-center, suggesting that it was once a barred dwarf spiral galaxy before its spiral arms were disrupted, likely by tidal interactions from the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and the Milky Way's gravity. The LMC is predicted to merge with the Milky Way in approximately 2.4 billion years.