Astronomy Picture of the Day . The Small Cloud of Magellan . ... Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. ... No sudden, sharp boundary marks the passage of day into night in this gorgeous view of ocean and clouds over our fair planet Earth. ... As little as 2,000 years ago, light from a massive stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC) first reached planet Earth. ...