nearest galaxy

The Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy is the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way Galaxy. This small galaxy is so close, it is being swallowed up by the Milky Way. It lies 80,000 light years from the Sun and 52,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way. The next nearest galaxy is the Large Magellanic Cloud, 170,000 light years away, which was thought to be the nearest galaxy until 1994, when the Sagittarius Dwarf was discovered. Originally it would have been a sphere of stars about 1000 light years across. But now it has been distorted and stretched by the gravitational pull of the Milky Way and is about 10,000 light years long. The few million stars that belong to the Sagittarius Dwarf are scattered over a patch of sky in the constellation Sagittarius. Just by looking it is impossible to tell them from stars in our own Galaxy.