What are Magellanic clouds? How were they discovered by Magellan?

Question

These were the clouds first observed by an astronomer, Magellan. But how and where I do not know......
Please help me out.

Answer 1

When the Portuguese explorer Magellan, ventured into the southern hemisphere, he noticed two strange blobs of light that lingered in the night sky. Unable to give an explanation of what they were, he simply called them clouds. They are now known as the clouds of Magellan.

Answer 2

The two Magellanic Clouds are irregular dwarf galaxies that may be orbiting our Milky Way galaxy, and thus are members of our Local Group of galaxies.The Large Magellanic Cloud and its neighbor 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. In Europe, it was the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan that first observed the clouds during the circumnavigation in 1519-1522, as reported by Antonio Pigafetta. However, naming the clouds after Magellan did not become widespread until much later. In Bayer's Uranometria (1603) they are called "Nubecula Maior" and "Nubecula Minor"; even in a 1795 French edition of Flamsteed's star atlas, they are designated as "Le Grand Nuage" and "Le Petit Nuage" (in both cases this means simply "Large nebula" and "Small nebula", in Latin and French correspondingly

Answer 3

History

They were certainly known since the earliest times by the ancient southerners. The first preserved mention of the Large Magellanic Cloud was by Persian astronomer Al Sufi, who in 964, in his Book of Fixed Stars, calls it Al Bakr, the White Ox of the southern Arabs, and points out that while invisible from Northern Arabia and Baghdad, this object is visible from the strait of Bab el Mandeb, at 12°15' Northern latitude.

In Europe, it was the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan that first observed the clouds during the circumnavigation in 1519-1522, as reported by Antonio Pigafetta. However, naming the clouds after Magellan did not become widespread until much later. In Bayer's Uranometria (1603) they are called "Nubecula Maior" [1] and "Nubecula Minor"; even in a 1795 French edition of Flamsteed's star atlas, they are designated as "Le Grand Nuage" and "Le Petit Nuage" [2] (in both cases this means simply "Large nebula" and "Small nebula", in Latin and French correspondingly).

Answer 4

The Magellanic clouds are nearby galaxies that can only be seen in the southern hemisphere. They can be seen clearly with the naked eye. They look like white blobs just above the Milky Way.

Magellan was not an astronomer, he was an explorer. It was his expedition that was the first to circumnavigate the globe although Magellan was not the first person to do so. He was killed in the Philippines and his second-in-command Sebastian del Cano was the first person to sail round the world.

Answer 5

They are only visible from the Southern Hemisphere, and there are 2; the Greater Magellanic Cloud and the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Although they appeared to him to be small, luminous clouds, he lacked the good telescopes necessary to resolve them into their component stars, and they are actually small galaxies, and the closest galactic companions to our Milky Way galaxy.

Answer 6

well these clouds were actually found during an expedition in europe during the circumnavigation 1519-22 by ferdinand magellan and this was as reported as Antonio Pigafetta. for more information you can check the website http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/projects/mcnews/mcwg.php where they do research on these clouds.

Answer 7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellanic_Clouds