Skip to main content

ESA Data Ontology

Search from vocabulary

Content language

Concept information

Galactic and extragalactic astronomy > Galaxy groups > Local Group > Magellanic Clouds > Small Magellanic Cloud
Galactic and extragalactic astronomy > Galaxies > Irregular galaxies > Magellanic irregular galaxies > Small Magellanic Cloud

Preferred term

Small Magellanic Cloud  

Definition

  • An irregular galaxy, the smaller of the two Magellanic Clouds that are satellites of our own Galaxy, lying in the southern constellation Tucana about 20 degrees from the south celestial pole. The SMC covers an area roughly 3 by 5 degrees in dimension and has an overall visual magnitude about +2.7. The SMC is about 10,000 light-years in diameter and some 210,000 light-years (61 kpc) away. It has a visible mass of about 1/50-th that of our Galaxy and 1/10-th of that of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Its heavy element content is about a factor 5 smaller than that of the Galaxy. The SMC is the third-nearest external galaxy after the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy and the LMC. (en)

Broader concept

Entry terms

  • S m c (en)
  • SMC (en)

Contributor

Editorial note

URI

http://astrothesaurus.org/uat/1468

Download this concept:

RDF/XML TURTLE JSON-LD Last modified 11/4/20