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This was virtually settled by Sir J. Herschel's description in 1847 of the structure of the Magellanic clouds; but it was not until Whewell, in 1853, and Herbert Spencer, in 1858, enforced the conclusions necessarily to be derived therefrom that the conception of the nebulæ as remote galaxies, which Lord Rosse's resolution of many into stellar points had appeared to support, began to withdraw into the region of discarded and half-forgotten speculations.
Stellar clouds are characteristic of the Galaxy and are not found beyond its borders, except in the ``Magellanic Clouds'' of the southern hemisphere, which resemble detached portions of the Milky Way.
The part of the Milky Way between the stars Sirius and Centaur was so rich in stars and crowded nebula: that it seemed a perfect blaze of illumination. And there were the Magellanic clouds, white-looking patches made up of countless stars individually unseen to the naked eye, and nebulae mists of radiating light all shining brilliantly and revolving around the starless South Pole.
Finally, he decided to use the distance between Antares and S Doradus in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, one of the two clouds of stars which float as satellites to the Galaxy itself. To double-check, he used the radius of the Galaxy as base to calculate the distance. The distances checked. The ship was five hundred thousand light years from home!
"Our Galaxy has two 'satellites', the Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds. If we spent ten years photographing and studying and comparing with the photographs we already have, we might find it. We know that system will locate the Galaxy, but we haven't the time. Any other suggestions?" "We came out here to visit planets, didn't we?" asked Arcot.
Those distant, silent, shining bodies amazingly intensified the sense of my loneliness and remoteness, and yonder Southern Cross and the luminous dust of the Magellanic clouds seemed not farther off than my native country.
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