Nearby Galaxies

Unfortunately those of us who live in the northern hemisphere cannot see the two closest galaxies, called the Magellanic Clouds, which are rather like two satellite galaxies to the Milky Way.

They can easily be seen by the naked-eye and their brightest stars can be seen with binoculars. These two galaxies are much smaller than the Milky Way and are about 200,000 light years away.

In the northern sky we can see two galaxies with the naked-eye. The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is a faint fuzzy patch that appears, with binoculars, as a lens shaped object. It is a galaxy rather like ours at a distance of about 2 million light years. It has two dwarf elliptical satellites which can be seen with a small telescope.

The other galaxy (M33 in Triangulum) is much harder to see although it is at a similar distance to the Andromeda galaxy. This is because it is smaller and less bright intrinsically. It too is a spiral galaxy.