 But the two dwarfs of the most interest can be seen in the southern night sky. They are the large Magellanic Cloud, 160 to 170,000 light years away, and the small Magellanic Cloud, a bit further at 200,000 light years from us. These companion galaxies were named for the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, whose crew discovered them during the first voyage around the world, from 1519 to 1522. The large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC for short, is the brightest galaxy in the sky. It contains several billions of stars, and many stars are still forming in it. The small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC for short, contains at least several hundred million stars. Like the LMC, there is still a lot of star formation taking place within it.