View allAll Photos Tagged LargeMagellanicCloud
Stars in the LMC have had their direct motion seen, giving astronomers a measure of how the galaxy is rotating.
Large Magellanic Cloud , LMC
77 Archivos Apilados en DeepSkyStacker
Procesados integramente en
PixInsight Core 1.8 Ripley
+ firma Photoshop
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Canon T3 + Helios 58mm f2
10 segundos, f2, iso 6400
Description: This is an X-ray image of two hot gas shells produced by supernova explosions. Although the shells appear to be colliding, it may be an illusion. Chandra X-ray spectra show that the shell of hot gas on the upper left contains considerably more iron than the one on the lower right. This implies that stars with very different ages exploded to produce these objects. The remnant on the upper left is from an old white dwarf star in a binary system, and the one on the lower right is from a much younger massive star, so the apparent proximity of the remnants is probably the result of a chance alignment.
Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray
Date: 2005
Persistent URL: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2005/d316/
Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Gift line: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Illinois/R.Williams & Y.-H.Chu; Optical: NOAO/CTIO/U.Illinois/R.Williams & MCELS coll.
Accession number: d316
This is a giant bubble carved into a gas cloud by the combined winds of a huge cluster of massive stars born inside it.
Image credit: ESO/Manu Mejias
Blog post with details: blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/10/kali-m...
Resembling the hair in Botticelli's famous portrait of the birth of Venus, softly glowing filaments stream from a complex of hot young stars. This image of a nebula known as N44C comes from the archives of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It was taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in November 1996.
N44C is the designation for a region of glowing hydrogen gas surrounding an association of young stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby, small, companion galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
N44C is peculiar because the star mainly responsible for illuminating the nebula is unusually hot. The most massive stars, ranging from 10-50 times more massive than the Sun, have maximum temperatures of 54,000 to 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit (30,000 to 50,000 Kelvin). The star illuminating N44C appears to be significantly hotter, with a temperature of about 135,000 degrees Fahrenheit (75,000 Kelvin)!
Ideas proposed to explain this unusually high temperature include the possibility of a neutron star or black hole that intermittently produces X-rays but is now "switched off."
In the top right of this Hubble image is a network of nebulous filaments that inspired comparison to Botticelli. The filaments surround a Wolf-Rayet star, another kind of rare star characterized by an exceptionally vigorous "wind" of charged particles. The shock of the wind colliding with the surrounding gas causes the gas to glow.
N44C is part of the larger N44 complex, which includes young, hot, massive stars, nebulae, and a "superbubble" blown out by multiple supernova explosions. Part of the superbubble is seen in red at the very bottom left of the image.
For more information please visit: hubblesite.org/image/1193/news_release/2002-12
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: D. Garnett (University of Arizona)
The Milky Way has several smaller galaxies that are travelling through space with it (well, with us, in fact). These are known as “satellite galaxies” or “companion galaxies” and of the approximately sixty that have been detected only two are visible with the unaided eye. Named the “Magellanic Clouds” (for Ferdinand Magellan, on whose round-the-world voyage they were cataloged) you can see them at the left of this image, looking like two hazy blobs in the sky. I always find it a bit of a buzz to capture the Magellanic Clouds in the same image as their much bigger brother and hope that you get the same buzz seeing the three galaxies together in a photo like this.
Unless you’re shooting with a very wide-angle lens you can’t get all three galaxies into the one shot but you can use the process of “stitching” to finish up with such a wide photo. For this image I shot thirteen overlapping images and then used software to blend them (via stitching) into this single scene.
Each of the photos that make up today’s image were shot with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 6400.
Dwarf galaxy NGC 1140 has an irregular form, much like the Large Magellanic Cloud — a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. This small galaxy is undergoing what is known as a starburst. Despite being almost ten times smaller than the Milky Way, it is creating stars at about the same rate, with the equivalent of one star the size of the Sun being created per year. This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the galaxy illuminated by bright, blue-white, young stars.
Galaxies like NGC 1140 — small, starbursting, and containing large amounts of primordial gas with significantly fewer elements heavier than hydrogen and helium than present in our Sun — are of particular interest to astronomers. Their composition makes them similar to the intensely star-forming galaxies in the early universe. And these early universe galaxies were the building blocks of present-day large galaxies like our galaxy, the Milky Way. But, as they are so far away, these early universe galaxies are much harder to study than NGC 1140.
The vigorous star formation will ultimately have a destructive effect on this dwarf galaxy, however. When its larger stars explode as supernovas, their gases will be blown into space at such velocities that they will escape the gravitational pull of the galaxy itself and be lost to intergalactic space. The ejection of gas from the galaxy thus means throwing out its potential for making future stars.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1529a/
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
An astronomer carrying a blue flashlight illuminates the Very Large Telescope (VLT) as the morning twilight starts to bathe the eastern part of the sky. Also visible, Jupiter, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (SMC and LMC), The Pleaiades, Orion, Sirius, and Venus. Paranal Observatory, Atacama Desert, Chile. 25 Aug 09.
© 2009 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
See also:
All-sky video, Cumulative video, Milky Way still, 35-exp stack, Moonset,
The Large Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy of ours, about 163,000 light years away and shapes and contains some of the most exotically eccentric emission nebula you can see in the sky. At the heart of the galaxy is this group, normally hidden by the bright central bulge, revealed here by the use of narrow-band filters.
The three brightest nebula clockwise from upper-left, are NGC1910, NGC1876 and NGC1918.
Specs:
Telescope: GSO RC10 f/6
Camera: Moravian G3-11000
Filters: Baader 7nm Ha and OIII. RGB
Sub-Exposures: 30 minutes.
Filter-Exposures H,O,R,G,B = 8,8,1.5,1.5,1.5 hours.
20.5 hours total over 4 nights in August and September 2019.
The Large Magellanic Cloud from Western Australia.
Olympus OM-D E-M5 II, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN (taken at f/2)
Out of this world public domain images from NASA. All original images and many more can be found from the NASA Image Library
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: www.rawpixel.com/board/418580/nasa
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of a pretty, pink nebula in the Tarantula Nebula in the the Large Magellanic Cloud. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: This image shows a region of space called LHA 120-N150. It is a substructure of the gigantic Tarantula Nebula. The latter is the largest known stellar nursery in the local Universe. The nebula is situated more than 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbouring dwarf irregular galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of a pretty, pink nebula in the Tarantula Nebula in the the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Original caption: This image shows a region of space called LHA 120-N150. It is a substructure of the gigantic Tarantula Nebula. The latter is the largest known stellar nursery in the local Universe. The nebula is situated more than 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbouring dwarf irregular galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.
EARTH & SKY Photo taken by Maki Yanagimachi - Location: Mt John University Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand
For some stunning Earth & Sky time-lapse animations, please refer to MakiTKP on You Tube.
DARK SKY PROJECT Photo taken by Igor Hoogerwerf - Location: University of Canterbury Mt John Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. For some stunning Dark Sky Project time-lapse animations, please refer to Dark Sky Project on You Tube.
Looking at this photo and seeing the three dead trees standing amongst the many living ones, I started pondering the social guideline that says to “not speak ill of the dead”. If trees could have thoughts and feelings, how would the living regard the dead ones? Would they look at them shyly, too embarrassed to be seen gazing at the revered remains of their ancestors? Instead, perhaps the younger and cocksure trees would sneer at them for not having been able to “go the distance”; for giving up the fight.
Fanciful thoughts, for sure, but consider all the more the fact that a number of the stars you see in this photo could have been dead for many years, even for centuries. The starlight that our eyes detect is what has reached us at the instant we are looking, after having travelled through space for varying distances over proportional lengths of time. If a star is four light-years away, then we’re seeing the light as it was four years ago when it left that star. If a hundred light-years distant, then our view is of one hundred year-old light. A simple look at the numbers says that at least some of the stars in this photo are dead now, despite looking alive and alight to us. As with the trees, there are many dead stars amongst the living.
A single frame, shot with Canon EOS 6D, Samyang 14mm @ f/2.8, 30 sec @ ISO 6400.
Found in the Large Magellanic Cloud, this is some kind of young star cluster that looks kind of like a globular cluster. It's got a cute little buddy to the lower right. I can't really say anything better than the old press release for this image did originally. I'm having fun going through old press release images and seeing what I can do with them.
This is one of those woeful old datasets you can mash together and sort of almost make a complete picture but not quite. You can see a good chunk of red H-alpha cloud is missing. I could take the H-alpha off and the cluster looks pretty good without it, but I've somehow grown fond of these funky-looking Frankensteined images.
Data from the following proposals was used:
The young double cluster NGC 1850 in the Large Magellanic Cloud
WFPC2 Astromertric Calibration [sic]
Moving Observations of a Fixed Star Cluster
Red: hst_06101_01_wfpc2_f656n_wf_sci + hst_06101_01_wfpc2_f675w_wf_sci + hst_05559_01_wfpc2_f569w_wf_sci hst_05559_01_wfpc2_f791w_wf_sci
Green: hst_08800_01_wfpc2_f555w_wf_sci
Blue: hst_05559_01_wfpc2_f439w_wf_sci
North is NOT up. It is 12.8° clockwise from up.
Struggled a bit getting the colors right on this one but at the end the work paid off.
HST_11360_d4_ACS_WFC_F435W_sci
HST_11360_d4_ACS_WFC_F606W_sci
HST_11360_d4_ACS_WFC_F814W_sci
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of a pretty, pink nebula in the Tarantula Nebula in the the Large Magellanic Cloud. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: This image shows a region of space called LHA 120-N150. It is a substructure of the gigantic Tarantula Nebula. The latter is the largest known stellar nursery in the local Universe. The nebula is situated more than 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbouring dwarf irregular galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows globular cluster NGC 1846, a spherical collection of hundreds of thousands of stars in the outer halo of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring dwarf galaxy of the Milky Way that can be seen from the southern hemisphere.
Aging bright stars in the cluster glow in intense shades of red and blue. The majority of middle-aged stars, several billions of years old, are whitish in color. Many far-distant background galaxies of varying shapes and structure are scattered around the image as well.
One intriguing object is a faint green bubble near the bottom center of the image. This so-called "planetary nebula" is the aftermath of the death of a star. It is uncertain whether the planetary nebula is a member of NGC 1846, or whether it simply lies along the line of sight to the cluster.
Measurements of the motion of the cluster stars and the planetary nebula's central star suggest it might be a member of the cluster.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2011/news-2011-35.html
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);
Acknowledgment: P. Goudfrooij (STScI)
This is a showpiece of the southern skies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way and one rich in star forming nebulas and clusters.
The bright cyan Tarantula Nebula, NGC 2070, is at left, with the NGC 2014/NGC 1935 area above it. The NGC 1763 complex is at upper right.
Though short in accumulated exposure time this night, this still shows some of the faint outlying glow of outer spiral arms, and some interstellar or intergalactic dust or gas clouds at lower right.
The field is 15º by 10º.
This is a stack of just 9 x 2-minute exposures with the Canon RF135mm lens at f/2 on the Canon Ra at ISO800, tracked but not guided on the Astro-Physics AP400 mount. The lens was equipped with an 82mm URTH Night broadband filter.
Taken March 14, 2024 from the Warrumbugles Mountain Motel near Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia. Incoming clouds prevented more exposures, and some light cloud on the last frame added the slight natural star glows.
These images show wide and close-up views of a long ribbon of gas called the Magellanic Stream, which stretches nearly halfway around the Milky Way.
In the combined radio and visible-light image at the top, the gaseous stream is shown in pink. The radio observations from the Leiden/Argentine/Bonn (LAB) Survey have been combined with the Mellinger All-Sky Panorama in visible light. The Milky Way is the light blue band in the centre of the image. The brown clumps are interstellar dust clouds in our galaxy. The Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, are the white regions at the bottom right.
More information: www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1314a/
Credit:
Credit for the radio/visible light image: David L. Nidever, et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF and Mellinger, LAB Survey, Parkes Observatory, Westerbork Observatory, and Arecibo Observatory.
Credit for the radio image: LAB Survey
Taken with a modified Canon 20D and 14 mm lens.
LINK
Colour version: www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51917175385/
The Auxiliary Telescope 2 (AT2) of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) makes astronomical observations while bathed in moonlight. The dwarf irregular galaxies the Small and Large Magellanic Cloud (SMC and LMC, respectively) can be seen on the background.
© 2009 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
This was a request by Brandon Lima, who found this tidbit in the archive (click his name to see his work on the matter). Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, within this WFPC2 shaped chunk of space are two things of note. At the lower right and partially off the frame is the aptly named Honeycomb Nebula. Above that are two white arcs one might mistake for just another piece of cloud, but they are in fact light echos emanating from the nearby sn1987a. If you would like to see the light echo in action, click here.
Note: I increased the saturation of the colors. Greenish H-alpha is due to filter selection.
HST Proposal 9111 - The UV Light Echo of Shock Breakout During SN 1987A
Red: hst_09111_06_wfpc2_f814w_wf_sci
Green: hst_09111_06_wfpc2_f675w_wf_sci
Blue: hst_09111_06_wfpc2_f555w_wf_sci
North is NOT up. It is 17.9° clockwise from up.
Thirty-five 30-sec [stacked] exposures (05-39) spanning 19 minutes. The Moon illuminates the Very Large Telescope (VLT) as it sets in the West while the disk of our galaxy, The Milky Way, passes overhead. Paranal Observatory, Atacama Desert, Chile. 24 Aug 09.
© 2009 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
See also:
All-sky video, Cumulative video, Milky Way still, Moonset, VLT at Dawn,
The Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (SMC and LMC, respectively) are irregular dwarf galaxies, which are members of our Local Group of galaxies. Once they were thought to be orbiting our Milky Way galaxy. However, new research seems to indicate that this is not the case. [Source: Wikipedia]
South African Astronomical Observatory, Sutherland, South Africa, 20 Mar 2010.
13-second exposure. © 2010 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image (released as part of Hubble's 30th anniversary celebrations) of two nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Original caption: This Hubble image shows how young, energetic, massive stars illuminate and sculpt their birthplace with powerful winds and searing ultraviolet radiation.
In this Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the âCosmic Reef,â because it resembles an undersea world.
The sparkling centerpiece of NGC 2014 is a grouping of bright, hefty stars, each 10 to 20 times more massive than our Sun. The starsâ ultraviolet radiation heats the surrounding dense gas. The massive stars also unleash fierce winds of charged particles that blast away lower-density gas, forming the bubble-like structures seen on the right. The starsâ powerful stellar winds are pushing gas and dust to the denserÂ
left side of the nebula, where it is piling up, creating a series of dark ridges bathed in starlight. The blue areas in NGC 2014 reveal the glow of oxygen, heated to nearly 20,000 degrees Fahrenheit by the blast of ultraviolet light. The cooler, red gas indicates the presence of hydrogen and nitrogen.
By contrast, the seemingly isolated blue nebula at lower left (NGC 2020) has been created by a solitary mammoth star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun. The blue gasÂ
was ejected by the star through a series of eruptive events during which it lost part of its outer envelope of material.
The image, taken by Hubbleâs Wide Field Camera 3, commemorates the Earth-orbiting observatoryâs 30 years in space.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of part of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Original caption: Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a dusty yet sparkling scene from one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy situated about 160 000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa. Despite being only 10–20% as massive as the Milky Way galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud contains some of the most impressive star-forming regions in the nearby Universe. The scene pictured here is on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula, the largest and most productive star-forming region in the local Universe. At its center, the Tarantula Nebula hosts the most massive stars known, which weigh in at roughly 200 times the mass of the Sun. The section of the nebula shown here features serene blue gas, brownish-orange dust patches and a sprinkling of multicoloured stars. The stars within and behind the dust clouds appear redder than those that are not obscured by dust. Dust absorbs and scatters blue light more than red light, allowing more of the red light to reach our telescopes and making the stars appear redder than they are. This image incorporates ultraviolet and infrared light as well as visible light. Using Hubble observations of dusty nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud and other galaxies, researchers will study these distant dust grains, helping to understand the role that cosmic dust plays in the formation of new stars and planets. [Image Description: A section of a nebula, made up of layers of coloured clouds of gas, of varying thickness. In the background are bluish, translucent and wispy clouds; on top of these are stretches of redder and darker, clumpy dust, mostly along the bottom and right. In the bottom left corner are some dense bars of dust that block light and appear black. Small stars are scattered across the nebula.]
EARTH & SKY Photo taken by Maki Yanagimachi - Location: Mt John University Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand
For some stunning Earth & Sky time-lapse animations, please refer to MakiTKP on You Tube.
Nikon D7100
Focal Length: 12mm
Optimize Image: Custom
Color Mode: Mode III (aRGB)
Long Exposure NR: Off
High ISO NR: On (Low)
2015/01/21 23:31:02.9
Exposure Mode: Manual
White Balance: Auto
RAW (14-bit)
Metering Mode: Multi-Pattern
AF Mode: Manual
Latitude: S 33°37.01'(33°37'0.5")
30 sec - F/4
Flash Sync Mode: Not Attached
Longitude: W 69°58.16'(69°58'9.8")
Azimuth: 195º (SSW)
Exposure Comp.: 0 EV
Sharpening: Normal
Altitude: 2697.00 m
Lens: 12-24mm F/4G Tokina
Sensitivity: ISO 6400
Image Comment: (c) Gerard Prins (+56) 22758 7209
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image (released as part of Hubble's 30th anniversary celebrations) of two nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: This Hubble image shows how young, energetic, massive stars illuminate and sculpt their birthplace with powerful winds and searing ultraviolet radiation.
In this Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the âCosmic Reef,â because it resembles an undersea world.
The sparkling centerpiece of NGC 2014 is a grouping of bright, hefty stars, each 10 to 20 times more massive than our Sun. The starsâ ultraviolet radiation heats the surrounding dense gas. The massive stars also unleash fierce winds of charged particles that blast away lower-density gas, forming the bubble-like structures seen on the right. The starsâ powerful stellar winds are pushing gas and dust to the denserÂ
left side of the nebula, where it is piling up, creating a series of dark ridges bathed in starlight. The blue areas in NGC 2014 reveal the glow of oxygen, heated to nearly 20,000 degrees Fahrenheit by the blast of ultraviolet light. The cooler, red gas indicates the presence of hydrogen and nitrogen.
By contrast, the seemingly isolated blue nebula at lower left (NGC 2020) has been created by a solitary mammoth star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun. The blue gasÂ
was ejected by the star through a series of eruptive events during which it lost part of its outer envelope of material.
The image, taken by Hubbleâs Wide Field Camera 3, commemorates the Earth-orbiting observatoryâs 30 years in space.
EARTH & SKY Photo taken by Joseph Pooley - Location: Church Of The Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. For some stunning Earth & Sky time-lapse animations, please refer to Earth & Sky Limited Partnership on You Tube.
All group photos will be available to view and download for two months, after this time frame you may contact Earth & Sky with your photo request.
Dead trees are favourite objects of mine for featuring in any kind of landscape photography. Nightscape shots seem to lend themselves to using these beautiful relics as foreground pieces to frame the stars, constellations, planets and galaxies to try to link the earthly and ephemeral to the almost endless sky. Like most other trees in this location–the Namadgi National Park, in the Australian Capital Territory–these once-living timbers are Australian eucalypts, or “gum trees”. The taller limbs are doing a wonderful job of framing up the Magellanic Cloud galaxies here.
While I was creating this shot Ian Williams was bit further off, setting up for a shot or two of his own. You can see the light from Ian’s Lume Cube, and Ian himself, at the bottom of this scene, about a quarter of the way in from the right. I had to drive back home to Sydney the next day, so Ian and I didn’t get a chance to compare shots from the night. You get an acting credit and a lighting credit for this one of mine, Ian!
A single shot captured with Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4 aperture, 15 sec exposure @ ISO 6400.
EARTH & SKY Photo taken by Igor Hoogerwerf - Location: The Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. For some stunning Earth & Sky time-lapse animations, please refer to Earth & Sky Limited Partnership on You Tube.
EARTH & SKY Photo taken by Maki Yanagimachi - Location: Mt John University Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand
For some stunning Earth & Sky time-lapse animations, please refer to MakiTKP on You Tube.
EARTH & SKY Photo taken by Maki Yanagimachi - Location: Mt John University Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand
For some stunning Earth & Sky time-lapse animations, please refer to MakiTKP on You Tube.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular cluster NGC 2210 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: This striking image shows the densely packed globular cluster known as NGC 2210, which is situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC lies about 157 000 light-years from Earth, and is a so-called satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, meaning that the two galaxies are gravitationally bound. Globular clusters are very stable, tightly bound clusters of thousands or even millions of stars. Their stability means that they can last a long time, and therefore globular clusters are often studied in order to investigate potentially very old stellar populations. In fact, 2017 research that made use of some of the data that were also used to build this image revealed that a sample of LMC globular clusters were incredibly close in age to some of the oldest stellar clusters found in the Milky Way’s halo. They found that NGC 2210 specifically probably clocks in at around 11.6 billion years of age. Even though this is only a couple of billion years younger than the Universe itself, it made NGC 2210 by far the youngest globular cluster in their sample. All other LMC globular clusters studied in the same work were found to be even older, with four of them over 13 billion years old. This is interesting, because it tells astronomers that the oldest globular clusters in the LMC formed contemporaneously with the oldest clusters in the Milky Way, even though the two galaxies formed independently. As well as being a source of interesting research, this old-but-relatively-young cluster is also extremely beautiful, with its highly concentrated population of stars. The night sky would look very different from the perspective of an inhabitant of a planet orbiting one of the stars in a globular cluster’s centre: the sky would appear to be stuffed full of stars, in a stellar environment that is thousands of times more crowded than our own. Links Science paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society [Image Description: A dense cluster of stars. It is brightest and most crowded in the centre, where the stars are mostly a cool white colour. Moving out towards the edges the stars become more spread out and reddish until a noticeable ‘edge’ to the cluster is reached. Beyond that edge there are still many stars, more disorganised and seen on a black background. Some stars appear to be in front of the cluster.]
Taken using iTelescope T09, a luminesence image of complied from 7 300s frames, total intergration time of 35 minutes. Unfortunately the weather changed and the roof was closed before the Red, Green and Blue channels could be taken, another night maybe. The image was processed in AstroPixelProcessor.
EARTH & SKY Photo taken by Igor Hoogerwerf - Location: University of Canterbury Mt John Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. For some stunning Earth & Sky time-lapse animations, please refer to Earth & Sky Limited Partnership on You Tube.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, the largest of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies.
Original caption: The brightly glowing plumes seen in this image are reminiscent of an underwater scene, with turquoise-tinted currents and nebulous strands reaching out into the surroundings. However, this is no ocean. This image actually shows part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small nearby galaxy that orbits our galaxy, the Milky Way, and appears as a blurred blob in our skies. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has peeked many times into this galaxy, releasing stunning images of the whirling clouds of gas and sparkling stars (opo9944a, heic1301, potw1408a). This image shows part of the Tarantula Nebula's outskirts. This famously beautiful nebula, located within the LMC, is a frequent target for Hubble (heic1206, heic1402). In most images of the LMC the colour is completely different to that seen here. This is because, in this new image, a different set of filters was used. The customary R filter, which selects the red light, was replaced by a filter letting through the near-infrared light. In traditional images, the hydrogen gas appears pink because it shines most brightly in the red. Here however, other less prominent emission lines dominate in the blue and green filters. This data is part of the Archival Pure Parallel Project (APPP), a project that gathered together and processed over 1000 images taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, obtained in parallel with other Hubble instruments. Much of the data in the project could be used to study a wide range of astronomical topics, including gravitational lensing and cosmic shear, exploring distant star-forming galaxies, supplementing observations in other wavelength ranges with optical data, and examining star populations from stellar heavyweights all the way down to solar-mass stars. A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Josh Barrington.