Magellanic Clouds

The Magellanic Clouds (or Nubeculae Magellani) are two irregular dwarf galaxies visible from the southern hemisphere; they are members of the Local Group and are orbiting the Milky Way galaxy. Because they both show signs of a bar structure, they are often reclassified as Magellanic spiral galaxies. The two galaxies are:

The Magellanic Clouds were known to the Polynesians and served as important navigation markers. Collectively they were known to Māori of New Zealand as Nga Patari-Kaihau or as Te Reporepo and were also used as predictors of winds.

The Magellanic Clouds have been known since the first millennium in Western Asia. The first preserved mention of the Large Magellanic Cloud is by the Persian astronomer Al Sufi. In 964, in his Book of Fixed Stars, under Argo Navis, he quoted that "unnamed others have claimed that beneath Canopus there are two stars known as the 'feet of Canopus' , and beneath those there are bright white stars that are unseen in Iraq nor Najd, and that the inhabitants of Tihama call them al-Baqar [cows], and Ptolemy did not mention any of this so we [Al-Sufi] does not know if this is true or false."

In Europe, the Clouds were first observed by Italian explorers Peter Martyr d'Anghiera and Andrea Corsali at the end of the 15th century. Subsequently, they were reported by Antonio Pigafetta, who accompanied the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan on its circumnavigation of the world in 1519–1522. However, naming the clouds after Magellan did not become widespread until much later. In Bayer's Uranometria they are designated as nubecula major and nubecula minor. In the 1756 star map of the French astronomer Lacaille, they are designated as le Grand Nuage and le Petit Nuage ("the Large Cloud" and "the Small Cloud").

...
Wikipedia