Key facts
- Category
- Galaxies
- Object class
- Dwarf spheroidal galaxy
- Host
- Milky Way
- Scale fact
- 3,300 lyvisible extent
- Composition
- Old stars, dark matter, very little gas
Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy
3,300 lyvisible extent
Details
The Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy is a faint dwarf spheroidal satellite of the Milky Way and one of our nearest galactic neighbors. Although it lies only about 290,000 light-years away, its stars are spread so thinly that it appears as a diffuse cloud rather than a bright compact galaxy, making it a valuable nearby fossil of the early universe.
The Sculptor Dwarf is a satellite galaxy about 290,000 light-years from the Milky Way. Its old stars are spread across a faint spheroidal system with little remaining gas and no prominent spiral structure or current large-scale star formation.
Stellar velocities imply much more gravitational mass than the visible stars provide, so Sculptor is treated as dark-matter dominated. Its different stellar populations also trace more than one early episode of star formation before the galaxy lost or consumed most of its gas.
Links
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy on Wikipedia
- Universe journey
- Local Group
Size neighbors
Objects near Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy on the scale
On the logarithmic size axis, Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy falls between Tarantula Nebula and Small Magellanic Cloud. The band uses nearby Galaxies records.
Shared physical scale
94,059ly
Sources
References for Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (La Silla Observatory 2015 / ESO, CC BY 4.0)
Continue with nearby objects or open the full scale.
About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.