Small Magellanic Cloud
A smaller companion galaxy of the Milky Way, a faint cloud to the eye in southern skies.
Tonight from
Rise, highest point and set are worked out on your device for the place above.
What it is
- Kind of object
- Galaxy
- Distance
- 203,700 light years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 2.7, easy to see with the eye
- Size in the sky
- About 9 times the width of the full Moon
- Constellation
- Tucana
- Catalogue
- NGC 292
Figures from OpenNGC, CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikipedia, “Small Magellanic Cloud”, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Graczyk et al. 2020); V from NED. All sources
Near it in the sky
- 47 TucanaeA globular cluster in Tucana, about three fingers away.
- AchernarA blue-white main-sequence star in Eridanus, about a hand span away.
- Large Magellanic CloudA galaxy in Dorado, about a hand span away.
- CanopusA yellow-white supergiant in Carina, about two hand spans away.
- Southern PleiadesAn open cluster in Carina, about two hand spans away.