Bernie Barraza, age 12, of Glendale, Ariz., for his question:

What are the Magellanic Clouds?

They are named for Ferdinand Magellan, who explored the southern seas and charted the southern skies way back in the 16th century. The Clouds of Magellan are seen as two hazy blurs of light in the night skies south of the equator. Telescope photographs reveal that they are small, irregular shaped galaxies of swarming stars.

The two clouds axe about 50,000 parsecs (a parsec is 19.2 trillion miles) beyond the rim of our aim huge, pin,rheeling galaxy. They seem to be moving around the outside of the galaxy, somewhat like a pair of moons orbiting around their parent planet. However, the galaxy and its captive Magellanic Clouds are on a far, far grander sca1e than a planet and its captive satellites.