Caption: The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way but less than one-tenth as massive; even so it contains the equivalent of over ten billion solar masses of material in the form of stars, gas and dust. The LMC is at a distance of 160,000 light years and is visible to the unaided eye from southern latitudes. The nearness of the LMC ensures that it is well-resolved into stars in quite a modest telescope, and deep photographs reveal it to be a highly complex system with large numbers of clusters, nebulae and dust clouds scattered apparently at random across the face of the galaxy. The bright red patch at the eastern end of the galaxy is the star-forming region 30 Doradus.
