The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a nearby galaxy, and a satellite of the Milky Way. At a distance of 50 kiloparsecs (˜163,000 light-years), the LMC is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal (~ 16 kiloparsecs) and the putative Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (~ 12.9 kiloparsecs, though its status as a galaxy is under dispute) lying closer to the center of the Milky Way. The LMC has a diameter of about 14,000 light-years (~ 4.3 kpc) and a mass of approximately 10 billion Sun masses (10¹⁰ solar masses), making it roughly 1/100 as massive as the Milky Way. The LMC is the fourth largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Milky Way, and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33).