Large Magellanic Cloud
What is Large Magellanic Cloud?
Galaxies· Distance ~160,000 ly. The largest satellite galaxy orbiting the Milky Way, visible to southern-hemisphere eyes as a hazy cloud — hence its mention in Magellan's voyage logs. It hosts the Tarantula Nebula, the Local Group's fiercest star factory, and produced the first naked-eye supernova of modern times in 1987.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Large Magellanic Cloud is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=large magellanic cloud — location and time set automatically, no login.
Its place in the sky
A galaxy, in the direction of Mensa, spanning about 645 arcminutes of sky — 21 times the width of the full Moon.
Distance and scale
| Distance | ~160,000 ly |
|---|---|
| Diameter | ~14,000 ly |
| Stars | ~30 billion |
| Where | southern skies only — not visible from Korea |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Discovery and name
Reported to Europe by Magellan's voyage (1519–22), though southern peoples and Arab sailors knew it long before.
Frequently asked
- How far is Large Magellanic Cloud from Earth?
- ~160,000 ly.
- How big is Large Magellanic Cloud?
- ~14,000 ly.
- Where in the sky is Large Magellanic Cloud?
- In the direction of Mensa.
- Where is Large Magellanic Cloud in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
A first-time visitor? The debate over the Cloud's orbit
The Large Magellanic Cloud was long taken for an old satellite that had circled the Milky Way many times. But the proper motion Hubble measured in 2007, around 320 km/s, was faster than expected — fast enough that the Cloud may not be a bound satellite at all but a visitor on its first pass. If so, it could merge with the Milky Way in billions of years, or swing away again.
The debate bears directly on the Milky Way's mass, since a heavier galaxy can hold a faster satellite, and the Cloud's speed has become a lower limit on that mass. Recent calculations lean toward the Cloud being heavier than assumed, roughly a tenth of the Milky Way's mass, and that weight warping our galaxy's disk and stirring its halo. The hazy cloud of the southern sky is, it seems, a hand shaking our own galaxy.
The galaxy in depth
The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way about 160,000 light-years away, sprawling across Dorado and Mensa over a span of some twenty full moons. Roughly 14,000 light-years wide and about a tenth of the Milky Way's mass, it holds around 30 billion stars. Long classed as irregular, it shows a faint central bar and is now regarded as a barred dwarf spiral.
Southern peoples had always known it as a cloud in the sky; Europe learned of it through the records of Magellan's 1519–1522 circumnavigation, which gave it its name. Inside lies the Tarantula Nebula, the most vigorous star-forming region in the Local Group, and in February 1987 Supernova 1987A erupted here — the first naked-eye supernova in four centuries. Tidal interaction with the Milky Way has drawn out a long bridge of hydrogen linking the two galaxies.
From Korea and other mid-northern latitudes it never rises. Switch the Sky view's location to Sydney or Cape Town and the LMC appears high in the southern sky. On the size ladder, place it beside the Milky Way to see the gap between a satellite and its host.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.