Magellanic Clouds - Text by M. Alan Kazlev Irregular-shaped nearby galaxies. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is near the constellation Dorado (as seen from SolSys), and is 163,000 light-years away. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is near the constellation Tucana, and is under 200,000 light-years away. There have been at least two thousand major, and several million minor, relativistic expeditions mounted to each of the Clouds to date.