Early evening, looking to the south, you will see two glowing clouds of light that look like detached portions of the Milky Way. These are the Clouds of Magellan, two external galaxies that are satellites of the Milky Way.
The Large Cloud is 169,000 light-years away and contains about ten billion stars. It was once a smaller version of our galaxy – a barred-spiral. The Small Cloud is more distant, 190,000 light-years. Its tadpole shape is due to the gravitational tidal effects of the Milky Way. In fact both Clouds are trapped by the gravitational pull of our galaxy and will, with the passage of time, be assimilated into the Milky Way.
Close to the Small Magellanic Cloud you will see a faint ball of light that looks like a fuzzy star. But this is no star. This is 47 Tucanae, an ancient cluster of about a million stars. In a telescope it is one of the most magnificent of celestial wonders. The cluster has a diameter of 140 light-years and the stars crowd towards the center to form a brilliant central blaze.
Imagine what the night sky would look like from a world located near the center of this cluster. Here the stars are 100 times closer together than in our region of space. There would be hundreds of stars bright enough to be seen in broad daylight.
This vast and ancient city of stars drifts in the emptiness of space above and beyond the spiral arms of our Milky Way at a distance of 15,000 light-years. From its vantage point, 15,000 light-years from home, you would be able to look out and across the great cosmic whirlpool of stars that is our galaxy.
With an age of just over 13 billion years, 47 Tucanae is one of the oldest objects in the universe. It is a relic, a building block, left over from the formation of our galaxy,
Richard Hall
Stonehenge Aotearoa