Edward Ihnat, age 12, of Gary, Ind., for his question:
What are the Magellanic Clouds?
The Magellanic Clouds are named for the great mariner Magellan who way the first to navigate around the entire globe. Oh, yes he was, though he was slain in the Philippines before he had completed the first single trip around the world. On a previous journey to the fast Indies he had already sailed. further east than the Philippines. The two journeys, one eastward and one westward, overlapped, making a complete circle around the globe, which is some 150, 000 light years from the Clouds of Magellan.
Our globe is a small part of a bigger Solar System which is a small part of a huge cartwheel of countless stars called the Galaxy. Spattered throughout the vast oceans of space there are countless other galaxies, more or loss like our own home in the heavens, Most of these faraway galaxies fall into distinct classes as to size and shape. Some are fuzzy balls, some are flattened lenses with two spiraling arms. This last type is the spiral nebula like our own Galaxy.
A few of the nearest galaxies can be seen as dim blurs of light in the bright constellations of our night sky. In the night skies over the tropics and, southern hemisphere, however, are two distant, dim blurs which do not fit into any galaxy class, yet we know they are huge, faraway star systems. These starry wonders are called the Magellanic Clouds.
In the first place, they are smaller than galaxies should be. Our own average‑sized Galaxy is about 100,000 light years from side to side. This means that we could cross it in 100,000 years ‑ if we traveled non‑stop at the speed of light which is about 186,000 miles a second. The larger Cloud. of Magellan is only 30,000 light years across and the smaller Cloud only 20,000 light years.
These baby star systems are lens‑shaped like our own Galaxy. From the earth we get a flattened., edgewise view of the larger Cloud and it looks like a slim oval blur. The smaller Cloud is tilted towards us at an angle of 30 degrees and it looks like a fatter oval.
The newest information about the heavens comes from radio astronomy. It tells us that the Clouds rotate, as our Galaxy rotates. Recent pictures of the Clouds show that each has but one spiraling arm, whereas a proper spiral nebula galaxy has two. Perhaps we could call the little star systems one‑armed galaxies.
Some experts have suggested that the Magellanic Clouds are actually satellites of our great Galaxy. In any case, the Clouds are three or four times smaller than our Galaxy and they are ten times closer than our nearest galaxy neighbor.