Magellanic Stream

Magellanic Stream — hydrogen gas stream, explore its interactive 3D model in Cosmoscope.

Explore Magellanic Stream in an interactive 3D view of space. See its catalogue position, distance and astronomical facts.

A river of hydrogen gas drawn out of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, trailing behind them across the southern sky while the Leading Arm reaches ahead. It is invisible to the eye: radio telescopes see it by the faint 21-centimetre glow of its hydrogen. Its place on the sky is measured; its distance is not, so the depth here is a model.

Type

Stream of hydrogen gas pulled out of the Magellanic Clouds

Span

About 200° of the southern sky, with the Leading Arm

Named

1974 (Mathewson, Cleary & Murray)

Includes

The Magellanic Bridge between the Clouds and the Leading Arm ahead of them

Shown here

HI4PI 21-cm radio map of fast-moving hydrogen (Westmeier 2018), as a pink glow

Depth

Illustrative: its distance is unmeasured; drawn 160,000–330,000 light-years away, receding along the tail, as in tidal models

Explore Magellanic Stream in 3D

Magellanic Stream is placed in three-dimensional space using catalogue coordinates and an adopted astronomical distance. Rotate and zoom to explore the model. Stellar surfaces, gas structure and dust depths may be reconstructed or illustrative, as described in its facts; this is not live imagery from a telescope.