Historically this region was named Apparatus Sculptoris, 'The Sculptor's Workshop', and though the Latin name was shortened to simply Sculptor, the English translation of its full name is still occasionally seen. One notable feature of this constellation also explains its lack of prominent stars: it contains the Southern Galactic Pole. This marks a point directly perpendicular to the Galactic plane; in other words, an observer viewing Sculptor in the skies of Earth is also looking directly out through the narrowest part the Milky Way Galaxy into extragalactic space.
The galaxies of the Sculptor Group cluster around a point some eleven million light years from the Milky Way. Far, far beyond them, some five hundred million light years away, is a remarkable object known as the Cartwheel Galaxy. This is a ring galaxy: a central core surrounded by a ring of stellar material, but without the spiral arms usually associated with a structure of this kind. This peculiar configuration is due to an ancient collision between two galaxies.