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Sorry, meant to include this with my previous...

"The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a nearby galaxy, and a satellite of the Milky Way.[5] At a distance of 50 kiloparsecs (≈163,000 light-years),[6][7][8][2] the LMC is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way, with the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal (~ 16 kiloparsecs) and the putative Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (~ 12.9 kiloparsecs, though its status as a galaxy is under dispute) lying closer to the center of the Milky Way. The LMC has a diameter of about 14,000 light-years (~ 4.3 kpc) and a mass approximately 10 billion times the mass of the Sun (1010 solar masses), making it roughly 1/100 as massive as the Milky Way.[3] The LMC is the fourth largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Milky Way, and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33)."--Wikipedia
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"The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way.[4] It is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy. It has a diameter of about 7,000 light-years,[5] contains several hundred million stars,[6] and has a total mass of approximately 7 billion times the mass of the Sun.[7] The SMC contains a central bar structure and it is speculated that it was once a barred spiral galaxy that was disrupted by the Milky Way to become somewhat irregular.[8] At a distance of about 200,000 light-years, it is one of the Milky Way's nearest neighbors. It is also one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye."--Wikipepedia

7 posted on 07/26/2015 10:24:37 PM PDT by ETL
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Oops! Missed this when I said above that both Magellanic Cloud contained a few 10s of billions of stars. Could have sworn I heard that from a reliable source awhile back.

"The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way.[4] It is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy. It has a diameter of about 7,000 light-years,[5] contains several hundred million stars"

8 posted on 07/26/2015 10:27:50 PM PDT by ETL
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To: ETL

**a dwarf galaxy**

Are we supposed to say th? Shouldn’t it be little galaxy?

Siriusly, this is fabulous!


14 posted on 07/27/2015 4:15:21 AM PDT by Gamecock (Many Atheists: "There is no God and I hate Him!")
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