<P> In Sri Lanka, from ancient times, these clouds have been referred to as the Maha Mera Paruwathaya meaning "the great mountain", as they look like the peaks of a distant mountain range . </P> <P> In Europe, the Clouds were first reported by 16th century Italian authors Peter Martyr d'Anghiera and Andrea Corsali, both based on Portuguese voyages . Subsequently, they were reported by Antonio Pigafetta, who accompanied the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan on its circumnavigation of the world in 1519--1522 . However, naming the clouds after Magellan did not become widespread until much later . In Bayer's Uranometria they are designated as nubecula major and nubecula minor . In the 1756 star map of the French astronomer Lacaille, they are designated as le Grand Nuage and le Petit Nuage ("the Large Cloud" and "the Small Cloud"). Herschel in 1847 from Cape Observatory South Africa spent 4 years writing a 400 - page report detailing over a thousand of the many stars, nebulae and clusters which constitute the cloud which appeared to be a separate more distant group to the usual stars in the Milky Way, an early indication of separate galaxy . </P> <P> The Large Magellanic Cloud and its neighbour and relative, the Small Magellanic Cloud, are conspicuous objects in the southern hemisphere, looking like separated pieces of the Milky Way to the naked eye . Roughly 21 ° apart in the night sky, the true distance between them is roughly 75,000 light - years . Until the discovery of the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy in 1994, they were the closest known galaxies to our own (since 2003, the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy was discovered to be closer still, and is now considered the actual nearest neighbor). The LMC lies about 160,000 light years away, while the SMC is around 200,000 . The LMC is about twice the diameter of the SMC (14,000 ly and 7,000 ly respectively). For comparison, the Milky Way is about 100,000 ly across . </P> <P> The total mass of these two galaxies is uncertain . Only a fraction of their gas seems to have coalesced into stars and they probably both have large dark matter halos . One recent estimate of the total mass of the LMC is about 1 / 10 that of the Milky Way . That would make the LMC rather a large galaxy in the present era of the observable universe . Since the size of relatively nearby galaxies are highly skewed, the average mass can be a misleading statistic . In terms of rank, the LMC appears to be the fourth most massive member of over 50 galaxies in the local group . Suggesting that the Magellanic cloud system is historically not a part of the Milky Way is evidence that the SMC has been in orbit about the LMC for a very long time . The Magellanic system seems most similar to the distinct NGC 3109 system, which is on the edge of the Local Group . </P>

The magellanic clouds seen from the southern hemisphere are examples of what type of objects