What is the big Magellan cloud?

The big Magellan cloud is a nearby Milky Way galaxy, our own galaxy. It is only 160,000 light -years away, much less than the more famous Andromeda Galaxy, two million light -years away. A large Magellan cloud gains less attention because it is less photogenic, less light and significantly smaller than the Galaxy Milky Way and Andromeda.

The large Magellan cloud has a weight of about ten billion suns, so it is only about 1/10, as massive as the Milky Way. A large Magellan cloud is called a "cloud" because of its appearance reminiscent of a cloud - in the composition it is not fundamentally different from any other galaxy. Big Magellan cloud surveys found 400 planetary nebulae, 60 globular clusters and 700 open clusters with hundreds of thousands of giant and supergiant stars. The last supernova, Supernova 1987a, occurred in a large Magellan cloud. Observation of star phenomena in the HAVE cloud was used for generations to familiarize astronomers with different classes of heavenly objectEktů. The big Magellan cloud is the second most interesting galaxy of the Milky Railway-the dwarf of Sagittarius is closer, at a distance of only 51,000 light years. This is very close, because the galaxy of the Milky Way has only a diameter of 100,000 light -years.

As with other galaxies, the distance from the large Magellan cloud is measured using what astronomers call "standard candles", the most popular are Cepheid stars. The Cepheid variables are torn and cool after predominantly solid periodic intervals. Because the period of their variability is strongly correlated with their absolute size, absolutely the size of distant cepheid variables can be known by observing their periods. Once the absolute and observed star size are known, its distance can be calculated.