View allAll Photos Tagged LargeMagellanicCloud
Lying within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to ours 158,000 light years away in the constellation of Doradus, this nebula complex presents a Ha and OIII rich tapestry of colourful nebulae and star clusters. Data was gathered over multiple nights in a moonless sky for a total of 17 hours of total exposure time.
This is a natural colour palette image (I.e. an LRGB image augmented with Ha and OIII narrow band data).
NGC 2011: is a Open Cluster
NGC 2014: is a HII emission nebula surrounding an open cluster of stars. Along with NGC 2020 it makes up what is called the Cosmic Reef.
NGC 2020: an Oxygen emission structure erupting from a single central Wolf-Rayet star. Along with NGC 2014 it makes up what is called the Cosmic Reef.
NGC 2021: is a Open Cluster
NGC 2029 / 2030 is a HII Ionized region and is listed as part of Lucke-Hodge stellar association 82, along with NGC 2032 and 2035. NOTE: The coordinates for NGC 2029 and NGC 2030 were reversed between Herschel's original Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars and the New General Catalogue. Consequently, there is much confusion over what designation the object in this image should get. Depending on which source you look at, it could be either. Most images I've seen indicate 2030 as the correct catalogue number. However, I'm still confused.
NGC 2032: is an emission nebula and consists of NGC 2029, NGC 2035 and NGC 2040.
NGC 2035: is part of a complex of nebulae and stars, including NGC 2032 and NGC 2040. It consists of large bright gas clouds which are separated by dark dust clouds. NGC 2029, NGC 2032 and NGC 2035 are star-forming regions
NGC 2040: is a supernova remnant which contains an open cluster whose stars have a common origin and are drifting together through space. There are three different types of stellar associations defined by their stellar properties. NGC 2040 is an OB association, a grouping that usually contains 10–100 stars of type O and B — these are high-mass stars that have short but brilliant lives.
For an annotated version see:
Looking south amid the dark skies of the Tankwa Karoo National Park towards Centauraus and some of the densest parts of the Milky Way, as well as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The very bright star near the top of the shot, to the right of the Milky Way, is Canopus.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds above light-painted Pinnacles, Nambung National Park.
These two galaxies orbit our own Milky Way galaxy, and until 1994 were regarded as the next closest galaxies to our own.
I understand that the Magellanic Clouds are only visible in the Southern Hemisphere, but are quite visible in that Hemisphere to the naked eye as 'grey smudges' in a dark sky.
The Small Magellanic Cloud (slightly below left of centre, and directly above the tallest pinnacle rock) is a little difficult to discern here, because of light pollution from the sweep of a car's headlights driving around in the National Park (bottom left-hand side). I was irritated by the invasion on my photography at the time, but upon review, chose this image as more interesting because of the light intrusion.
Just to the left of the Small Magellanic Cloud is the bright globular star cluster 47 Tucanae (NGC 104). The bright white star in the upper right corner of the frame is Canopus.
Another wide angle shot from a previous trip to The Pinnacles Desert, about 2 hours north of Perth in Western Australia.
Nikon d5500
50mm + Hoya Filter
36 x 8 seconds
ISO 4000
f/2.2
Stitched in MS ICE
This is a 385 megapixel image of the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds taken at Herron Point, just south of Mandurah in Western Australia. These neighbouring galaxies are 160k & 200k light years away respectively. The LMC contains approximately 30 billion stars while the SMC contains a few billion. The bright 'star' above the SMC is a globular cluster called 47 Tucanae containing around 500k stars. They can only be seen in Southern Hemisphere skies, so lucky us I guess :)
Another shot taken near Siding Spring Observatory in regional NSW, Australia. The skies in this area are very dark, but still the light pollution bubbles up all around. Here the Milky Way skirts the horizon, and the Large Magellanic Cloud (another galaxy) can be seen in the top left. Those guys under the yellow lights - more than 70 kms away and mostly in very small towns - couldn't have seen what was right above them. Just goes to show how much stray light must come from cities.
This is a stitched panorama of 7 images.
Nikon d5500
85mm
ISO 4000
f/2.2
Foreground: 15 x 20 seconds
Sky: 10 x 20 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 25 shot panorama of the Large Magellanic Cloud above a lone pinnacle at The Pinnacles Desert, 2 hours north of Perth in Western Australia.
The LMC is a dwarf satellite galaxy about 160k light years away and contains roughly 30 billion stars.
Not for the first time, the appearance of the two dwarf galaxies known as the “Magellanic Clouds” remind me of jellyfish, or similarly amorphous inhabitants of the ocean. Seeing them hovering over the Tasman Sea at Gerroa, Australia here in my photo makes that act of imagination a whole lot easier. The “Clouds” aren’t creatures, nor are they from the ocean, but are companions of our Milky Way galaxy, travelling with us through the Local Group of galaxies, yet visible to nocturnal folk here in the Southern Hemisphere.
To the upper-left of the Small Magellanic Cloud is what looks like an overgrown star, but is a globular star cluster–a big ball of stars, pretty much–with the unromantic name of 47 Tucanae. This bright and slightly fuzzy orb that I included in the photo is about 120 light-years in diameter, making it a massive ball of stars, indeed.
To produce this final photo, I shot two overlapping images & after editing those in Adobe Lightroom Classic, I stitched them together with the (now-defunct) application Autopano Pro. After stitching, I washed the composite frame through Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop (for noise reduction and improving some of the details). The two original frames that I took were shot with my Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2.0, using an exposure time of 13 seconds @ ISO 3200.
Normally in March I do a trip to Australia and if I get a chance, I head to Port Campbell on the Victoria coast where - if the conditions are right - you can see this sort of stuff at night. Sadly, I didn't make the trip this year but here's a photo (a stitch of several photos actually) of the Milky Way from the bottom of the Gibson Steps from 12 months ago.
Orion is on the right. Gog and Magog (and the Magellanic Clouds) are in the centre. The core of the Milky Way is on the left.
Enjoy.
I’m not sure how long it’s been since I posted a Milky Way arch photo. I’ve had this one in the can for several months now, so figured it was time to get it in front of some eyeballs.
As well as the Milky Way my photo takes in two other galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Jupiter, Saturn & Mars are here as well, and I also caught a lot of green atmospheric airglow in the panorama.
The location I captured the sky at on this clear night was Seven Mile Beach, near Gerroa, Australia. I shot 71 overlapping images, with my camera mounted on a “Nodal Ninja” panoramic head.
I shot each of the 71 individual frames with my Canon EOS 6D camera, a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.8, using an exposure time of 10 seconds @ ISO 6400.
Nikon d5100
35mm
4 x 13 seconds
ISO 4000
f2
Hmmm, something different about this one.....oh, no Milky Way! Well technically it's all the Milky Way, except those two splotches of course, they're the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, our neighbouring galaxies 200k & 160k light years away. The LMC contains approximately 30 billion stars while the SMC contains just a few billion. These two beauties can only be seen in Southern Hemisphere skies.
The yellow/orange light pollution is caused by smoke from controlled burns around the city at the time.
The beautiful country night sky filled with stars and the Large Magellanic Cloud in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
Decided to re-process a little bit better these images taken with a Planewave CDK 431mm F6.8, and FLI Proline 16803 CCD camera.
5 x 600s in H-alpha
6 x 600s in OIII
3 x 600s in SII
All bin1x1, processing and editing done in PixInsight and DxO PhotoLab 2.
Back in late September and early October 2018, I booked T32 in Siding Spring Observatory (Australia, part of iTelescope.net) over 3 nights to image a small part of the Large Magellanic Cloud through narrowband filters.
The telescope performed moderately well with some images slightly out of focus, but the most difficult part for me was dealing with column defects on the CCD sensor. I tediously listed 73 by hand, and some of them still show up after processing ...
Another close up into the famous deep southern sky object, Large Magellanic Cloud.
This region contains star clusters, double clusters, a super cluster, emission nebulae and a globular cluster (NGC1850, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1858) in the Dorado constellation, located in the northwest part of the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud at a distance of 168,000 light years from the Sun... location of the imaged area is shown in the thumbnail image of the LMC.
This is an unusual cluster system because the main distribution of stars is like a globular cluster, but unlike the globular clusters of the Milky Way it is composed of young stars.
This object was imaged from a Bortle 4-5 quality sky.
Integration time was 10 hours and 35 minutes in bi-color, Hydrogen Alpha and OIII narrowband color with a C8 SCT at f6.3 with a QHY268M astronomy camera.
This is a close up of an area in the outer part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. A deep southern sky object known as the "Dragon's Head" or the "Dragon's Face" nebula.
This object was imaged during one night from my backyard which tends to have a Bortle 4-5 quality sky.
Integration time was 5 hours and 10 minutes in bi-color, Hydrogen Alpha and OIII narrowband color with a C8 SCT at f6.3 with a QHY268M astronomy camera.
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About
There is nothing more exciting than the night sky, and nothing more rewarding when you learn something new about it.
I love being out with nature, at dawn, dusk, or during the middle of the night. I find it amazing (in terms of photography more so) that the stars we see at night are emit light that has traveled millions 'light years' to reach us. When you pause for a moment and think about the light in a studio/strobe its instant, its right there, but when we look at the stars, we are looking at the past, something that took place millions of years ago, amazing!
So what did I learn?
Well, as previously mentioned, there is more than one way to find the celestial pole (the spot the stars spin around), all you need to do is find the 'Magellanic Clouds'
What the?
The Magellanic Clouds are two dwarf galaxies, and you can see them clearly here. Make an equilateral triangle, using the two clouds, the third point of which is the south celestial pole.
I'd love a 5D for Christmas, and a 16-35L, so I can shoot these with next to no noise ;P
Enjoy.
- Canon 50D.
- ISO 200, f5.6, 20 minutes, 10mm
- Sigma 10-20mm lens.
- Tripod.
Processing
- NR in Lightroom 2.2.
- Soft light layer in Photoshop 6.0.
- Colour dodge in Photoshop 6.0.
About the Magellanic Clouds.
The two Magellanic Clouds (or Nubeculae Magellani) 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. The two galaxies are, Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).
The Magellanic Clouds were certainly known since the earliest times by the ancient Middle Eastern peoples. The first preserved mention of the Large Magellanic Cloud was by Persian astronomer Al Sufi, who in 964, in his Book of Fixed Stars, calls it al-Bakr, meaning "the White Ox", of the southern Arabs, and points out that while invisible from Northern Arabia and Baghdad, this object is visible from the strait of Bab el Mandeb, at 12°15' Northern latitude.
In Europe, they were first observed by Italian Peter Martyr and Andreas Corsali in the end of 15 century. Subsequently, it was reported by Antonio Pigafetta for the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan during the circumnavigation in 1519–1522. However, naming the clouds after Magellan did not become widespread until much later. In Bayer's Uranometria they are designated as 'NVBECVLA MAIOR' and 'NVBECVLA MINOR'; even in a 1756 French astronomer Lacaille's star map, they are designated as 'le Grand Nuage' and 'le Petit Nuage', (in both cases this means simply the "Large Cloud" and the "Small Cloud", in Latin or French).
The Large Magellanic Cloud and its neighbor and relative, the Small Magellanic Cloud, are conspicuous objects in the southern hemisphere, looking like separated pieces of the Milky Way to the naked eye. Roughly 21° apart in the night sky, the true distance between them is roughly 75,000 light-years. Until the discovery of the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy in 1994, they were the closest known galaxies to our own.
Observation and theoretical evidence suggest that the Magellanic Clouds have both been greatly distorted by tidal interaction with the Milky Way as they travel close to it.
The image shows the central region of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The young and dense star cluster R136 can be seen at the lower right of the image. This cluster contains hundreds of young blue stars, among them the most massive star detected in the Universe so far. Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope astronomers were able to study the central and most dense region of this cluster in detail. Here they found nine stars with more than 100 solar masses.
Credit: NASA, ESA, P Crowther (University of Sheffield)
Read more here.
57 x 13 seconds
ISO 3200
35mm
f1.8
This is the last of my photos from Lake Dumbleyung and it's also my biggest pano yet, coming in at 165 megapixels.
As per the above, it consists of 57 individual photos stitched in PTGui covering approximately 220 degrees of the night sky. I've never taken a full panorama with my 35mm lens, they've always covered no more than about 100 degrees. It's quite a bit more work not only because I'm taking a lot more shots but also in stitching it together.........my pc actually shut itself down at one point! As per usual, the foreground was light painted using a hand held spotlight.
This cloudy, turbulent scene acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2017 shows a stellar nursery within the Large Magellanic Cloud. This nursery, known as N159, contains many hot young stars. These stars emit intense ultraviolet light, which causes nearby hydrogen gas to glow, and torrential stellar winds, which carve out ridges, arcs, and filaments from the surrounding material. N159 is located over 160,000 light-years away, just south of the Tarantula Nebula.
At the heart of this cosmic cloud lies the Papillon Nebula, a butterfly-shaped region of nebulosity. This small, dense object is classified as a High-Excitation Blob, and is thought to be tightly linked to the early stages of massive star formation.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astrophysics #NASAGoddard #stellarnursery #LargeMagellanicCloud #nebula
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a satellite dwarf galaxy of the Milky Way that is among the closest galaxies to Earth. At about 163,000 light-years from Earth, the dwarf galaxy looks like a faint cloud in Southern Hemisphere skies.
Taken on holiday in South Africa on the 16th March 2015
AstroTrac TT320X
Baader Modified Canon 6D
Canon 135mm f/2 L lens @ f/2
21x 30 Second Subs @ ISO1600
20x Bias
20x Darks
20x Flats
(EXPLORED)
NGC2070
I used remote observatory, iTelescope, to took this image.
The plan started at the beginning of September 2019. I acquired L, R, G, B, SII, H-alpha, OIII each 300s*1. I did LRGB, SHO, HOO color mapping, and I found out that the luminous frame is bright (or less noise), but the nebulosity is not as sharp as narrowband frames. Since the SII frame is much dimmer than others, I experimentally took single 900s SII subframe. The Hubble Palette image with S:H:O=9:3:3 still shows water blue color (bule+green) in nebulosity and, badly, very red color in star. I did some google search, notice that there might be not so many SII emission at this place. "Ok, I need to change the strategy." I talked to myself at that time.
After that, I focus on HOO composition. I took an extra nine subframes each with H-alpha and OIII filter. Finally, HOO color nebula combines with LRGB stars makes this image more nature.
The plan will be continuous...
Time: 2019/09
iTelescope T31
OTA: Planewave 20" CDK
Aperture: 510mm
Focal Length: 2259mm
F/Ratio: f/4.4
CCD: FLI-PL09000
LRGB: 300s*1 (each)
H-alpha: 300s*10
OIII: 300s*10
Data Source: iTelescope remote observatory. My friend offers me observe time, and I make the observational plan.
Beach camping at Teewah (Double Island Point) looking back towards Noosa. 4WD access only.
Also visible are the small and large Magellanic clouds.
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/European Space Agency (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 color 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 1,000 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.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA: acknowledgement: Josh Barrington
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Here's the Milky Way in all its glory.
Seen above the limestone seastacks of Gog & Magog - two of the 12 Apostles off the southern coast of Victoria in Australia - the brightest part of this photo is the Carina Nebula all of 9,000 light years away in the constellation of Sagittarius.
The dark patch above it is the Coalsack, another nebula but this time a dark one.
Between Gog & Magog is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), 160,000 light years away, and to the left of the LMC and a little higher in the sky is the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), all of 200,000 light years away.
Makes you think, doesn't it?
NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's 30 years of unlocking the beauty and mystery of space by unveiling a stunning new portrait of a firestorm of starbirth in a neighboring galaxy.
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 "Cosmic Reef," because it resembles an undersea world.
Thirty years ago, on April 24, 1990, Hubble was carried aloft from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the space shuttle Discovery, along with a five-astronaut crew. Deployed into Earth orbit a day later, the telescope opened a new eye onto the cosmos that has been transformative for our civilization.
Hubble is revolutionizing modern astronomy, not only for scientists, but also by taking the public on a wondrous journey of exploration and discovery. Hubble's never-ending, breathtaking celestial snapshots provide a visual shorthand for Hubble's top scientific achievements. Unlike any space telescope before it, Hubble made astronomy relevant, engaging and accessible for people of all ages. The space telescope's iconic imagery has redefined our view of the universe and our place in time and space.
"Hubble has given us stunning insights about the universe, from nearby planets to the farthest galaxies we have seen so far," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "It was revolutionary to launch such a large telescope 30 years ago, and this astronomy powerhouse is still delivering revolutionary science today. Its spectacular images have captured the imagination for decades, and will continue to inspire humanity for years to come."
Unencumbered by Earth's blurring atmosphere, the space observatory unveils the universe in unprecedented crystal-clear sharpness across a broad range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light.
Hubble's top accomplishments include measuring the expansion and acceleration rate of the universe; finding that black holes are common among galaxies; characterizing the atmospheres of planets around other stars; monitoring weather changes on planets across our solar system; and looking back in time across 97% of the universe to chronicle the birth and evolution of stars and galaxies.
Hubble has yielded to date 1.4 million observations and provided data that astronomers around the world have used to write more than 17,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications, making it the most prolific space observatory in history. Its archival data alone will fuel future astronomy research for generations to come.
Hubble's longevity can be attributed to five space shuttle servicing missions, from 1993 to 2009, in which astronauts upgraded the telescope with advanced instruments, new electronics and on-orbit repairs. The venerable observatory, with its suite of cameras and other instruments, is expected to stay operational through the 2020s, in synergy with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
For more information: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/hubble-marks-30-years-i...
Credits: NASA, ESA and STScI
In this image from 2014, brightly glowing plumes of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) appear almost like an ocean current with turquoise-tinted currents and nebulous strands reaching out into the surroundings.
This image shows part of the Tarantula Nebula's outskirts located within the LMC, a small nearby galaxy that orbits the Milky Way and appears as a blurred blob in our skies. The Hubble Space Telescope has peeked many times into this galaxy, releasing stunning images of the whirling clouds of gas and sparkling stars.
In most images of the LMC the color is completely different to that seen here. For this image, researchers substituted the customary R filter, which selects the red light, and replaced it 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 1,000 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.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA: acknowledgement: Josh Barrington
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astrophysics #gsfc #nebula
The Large Magellanic Cloud is a companion satellite galaxy of our Milkyway 163,000LY away and only visible from the southern hemisphere.
Exposed in HaLRGB using two cameras, a dedicated & cooled astronomy camera, the QHY268M, for the luminance and Hydrogen Alpha signal and a stock unmodded Canon 40D DSLR for the RGB color data, imaged at 150mm focal length through an Sigma 150mm f2.8 prime lens.
Guided with an 80mm refractor at 500mm FL and tracked on a hypertuned CGEM mount.
Total exposure time was 7 hours and 23 minutes.
Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is one of the symbol of the Southern Sky (especially for me northern-biased star gazer). First time I saw Large Magellanic Cloud in Peru, couple of years ago, but it was too close to horizon. Finally, I got it! This small white cloud on the right is not regular cloud, it is companion of our Milky Way, just 1/100 mass of our Galaxy. The position of the LMC can be recognized using Southern Cross. On Galapagos fantastic starry night sky, the LMC view was amazing!
Large Magellanic Cloud, Puerto Villamil, Isabela Island, Galapagos, Ecuador. Canon EOS 60Da, EF16-35mm f/2.8L II USM, 30.0 sec; f/4.0; ISO 6400.
After sitting on this panorama for almost 2 years I've finally decided to share it. The fact is that my trip to NZ was marred with lots of clouds and this was a 15 minute window where finally the clouds split, but only briefly. I guess it left a sour taste and I never really bothered check it out. Delay no more, here it is.
The James Webb Space Telescope is aligned across all four of its science instruments, as seen in a previous engineering image showing the observatory’s full field of view. Now, we take a closer look at that same image, focusing on Webb’s coldest instrument: the Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI.
The MIRI test image (at 7.7 microns) shows part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way provided a dense star field to test Webb’s performance.
Here, a close-up of the MIRI image is compared to a past image of the same target taken with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Array Camera (at 8.0 microns). The retired Spitzer was the first observatory to provide high-resolution images of the near- and mid-infrared Universe. Webb, by virtue of its significantly larger primary mirror and improved detectors, will allow us to see the infrared sky with improved clarity, enabling even more discoveries.
For example, Webb’s MIRI image shows the interstellar gas in unprecedented detail. Here, you can see the emission from ‘polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons’ – molecules of carbon and hydrogen that play an important role in the thermal balance and chemistry of interstellar gas. When Webb is ready to begin science observations, studies such as these with MIRI will help give astronomers new insights into the birth of stars and protoplanetary systems.
In the meantime, the Webb team has begun the process of setting up and testing Webb’s instruments to begin science observations this summer. Today at 17:00 CEST, Webb experts will preview these next two months of instrument preparations in a teleconference for media. Listen to the audio stream live at nasa.gov/live.
Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and CSA. MIRI is part of Europe’s contribution to the Webb mission. It is a partnership between Europe and the USA; the main partners are ESA, a consortium of nationally funded European institutes, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech and NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
I can almost hear once again the sound of the quiet that I enjoyed while I shot this scene at the beginning of June on the Tuross River, on Australia's southeast coast. The lack of breeze on the river rendered the water's surface a natural mirror to reflect the light from the sky and the foreground to where I had positioned my camera. As well as numerous stars, you can see the Large Magellanic Cloud–which is a galaxy and not a cloud at all–shining off the top of the water.
At this point, the river forks off to the right into Bumbo Creek, which is broached by the wooden bridge that leads to lush and prized dairy paddocks. Beyond that bridge, you can see the fine layer of fog that hovered over the fields in the post-midnight hour.
Ruling over it all, of course, is the central band and concentrated core of our home in the heavens, the Milky Way galaxy. My attraction to viewing and photographing this section of the sky isn't only the billions of stars concentrated there. The dark filament-like structures known as "dust lanes" that only make themselves visible by the millions of stars they obscure, also captivate me.
I created this image by shooting nine overlapping images, with my camera mounted on a panoramic head that sets a fixed angle between each photo. After capturing the individual pictures and downloading them to my computer, I used some panorama-stitching software to blend the nine images into one. To shoot each of those nine photos I used my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Samyang 14mm f/2.4 lens @ f/2.4, using an exposure time of 20 seconds @ ISO 6400.
This shot from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a maelstrom of glowing gas and dark dust within one of the Milky Wayâs satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).
This stormy scene shows a stellar nursery known as N159, an HII region over 150 light-years across. N159 contains many hot young stars. These stars are emitting intense ultraviolet light, which causes nearby hydrogen gas to glow, and torrential stellar winds, which are carving out ridges, arcs, and filaments from the surrounding material.
At the heart of this cosmic cloud lies the Papillon Nebula, a butterfly-shaped region of nebulosity. This small, dense object is classified as a High-Excitation Blob, and is thought to be tightly linked to the early stages of massive star formation.
N159 is located over 160 000 light-years away. It resides just south of the Tarantula Nebula (heic1402), another massive star-forming complex within the LMC. It was previously imaged by Hubbleâs Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which also resolved the Papillon Nebula for the first time.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
A giant nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud
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Image exposure: 130 minutes
Image Size: 1.53º x 1.02º
Image date: 2024-11-22
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Further Details in my Cosmic Focus website
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Nikon d5500
35mm
ISO 3200
f/2.5
28 x 30 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
28 shot panorama of the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds above a section of rapids on the Murray River at Dwellingup, about 100km south of Perth in Western Australia.
Nikon d5500
50mm + Hoya Red Intensifier filter
ISO 3200
f/3.5
16 x 30 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
16 image panorama of the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds over the 'Tree of Soles', a dead tree covered in old shoes, at Herron Point about an hour south of Perth in Western Australia.
Thirty years ago, on 23 February 1987, the light from a stellar explosion marking the death of a massive star arrived at Earth to shine in Southern Hemisphere skies.
Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, SN 1987A was the closest observed supernova to Earth since the invention of the telescope. Studying it for the last 30 years has revolutionised our understanding of the explosive death of massive stars.
In operation since 1990, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed the supernova remnant many times, as highlighted in this montage. The images show its evolution between 1994 and 2016, and highlight the main ring that blazes around the exploded star.
A new wide-field image was also taken by Hubble in January 2017 to mark the 30 year anniversary.
By observing the expanding remnant material over the years, Hubble has helped to show that the material within the ring was likely ejected 20 000 years before the actual explosion took place.
The initial burst of light from the supernova initially illuminated the rings. They slowly faded over the first decade after the explosion, until a fast-moving shell of gas ejected during the supernova slammed into the central ring, sending a powerful shockwave through the gas, heating it to searing temperatures and generating strong X-ray emission.
This caused clumps of denser gas within the ring to light up like a string of pearls, seen as the increasing number of bright spots, which are now fading again.
As the shock wave continues to move through the shells ejected by the dying star in its final throes of life, who knows what new details will be revealed?
Credit: NASA, ESA and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation) and P. Challis (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
This Picture of the Week shows an open cluster known as NGC 2164, which was first discovered in 1826 by a Scottish astronomer named James Dunlop. NGC 2164 is located within one of the Milky Way galaxy's closest neighbours — the satellite galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic cloud is a relatively small galaxy that lies about 160 000 light-years from Earth. It is considered a satellite galaxy because it is gravitationally bound to the Milky Way. In fact, the Large Magellanic cloud is on a very slow collision course with the Milky Way — it’s predicted that they will collide 2.4 billion years from now.
The Large Magellanic Cloud only contains about one hundredth as much mass as the Milky Way, but it still contains billions of stars. The open cluster NGC 2164 is in good company in the Large Magellanic Cloud — the satellite galaxy is home to roughly 700 open clusters, alongside about 60 globular clusters. This image of NGC 2164 was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which has previously imaged many other open clusters, including NGC 330 and Messier 11.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Kalirai, A. Milone; CC BY 4.0
A Narrowband Hydrogen-Alpha study of a section of the bubbles and swirls of dust and gas in the Large Magellanic Cloud (visible in the Southern Hemisphere).
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is one of the irregular satellite dwarf Galaxies of the Milky Way Galaxy, that is among the closest Galaxies to Earth. There is also a Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), both discovered by Magellan. The Magellanic Clouds are visible from the Southern Hemisphere with the naked eye.
The LMC contains the most active starburst region known in the Local Group of Galaxies. The Local Group comprises more than 54 Galaxies (mostly dwarf Galaxies). The three largest members of the group (in descending order) are the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy.
Wavelength of light:
H-Alpha line 656nm (3nm bandwidth).
Integration time:
18 hours.
Martin
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Several thousand years ago, a star some 160 000 light-years away from us exploded, scattering stellar shrapnel across the sky. The aftermath of this energetic detonation is shown here in this striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 .
The exploding star was a white dwarf located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of our nearest neighbouring galaxies. Around 97% of stars within the Milky Way that are between a tenth and eight times the mass of the Sun are expected to end up as white dwarfs. These stars can face a number of different fates, one of which is to explode as supernovae, some of the brightest events ever observed in the Universe. If a white dwarf is part of a binary star system, it can siphon material from a close companion. After gobbling up more than it can handle — and swelling to approximately one and a half times the size of the Sun — the star becomes unstable and ignites as a Type Ia supernova.
This was the case for the supernova remnant pictured here, which is known as DEM L71. It formed when a white dwarf reached the end of its life and ripped itself apart, ejecting a superheated cloud of debris in the process. Slamming into the surrounding interstellar gas, this stellar shrapnel gradually diffused into the separate fiery filaments of material seen scattered across this skyscape.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Y. Chu
If you didn't know that the Carina Nebula was just rising over the horizon, you could be forgiven for thinking they were red fireworks or red flares, but they are stellar-fireworks, the Carina Nebula otherwise known as The Great Nebula in Carina.
The nebula is one of the largest diffuse nebulae in our skies. It contains several open clusters of stars. Although it is some four times as large and even brighter than the famous Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is much less well known, due to its location in the southern sky.
The nebula lies at an estimated distance between 6,500 and 10,000 lights years from Earth.
Regarding the light bow on the left I can not be too sure what it is, there is some town light pollution and there is also some green airglow visible.
14 exposure panorama taken in the early hours of the morning just after the moon set. Temps were a mild -4c.
This glittering ball of stars is the globular cluster NGC 1898, which lies near the center of our galactic neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. That dwarf galaxy hosts an extremely rich population of star clusters, making it an ideal laboratory for investigating star formation.
Discovered in November 1834 by British astronomer John Herschel, NGC 1898 has been scrutinized numerous times by @NASAHubble. Today we know that globular clusters are some of the oldest known objects in the universe and are relics of the first epochs of galaxy formation.
We already have a pretty good understanding of the Milky Way’s globular clusters. Our studies on globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies just started. Observations of NGC 1898 will help to determine whether their properties are similar to the ones in our Milky Way, or if they have different features due to being in a different cosmic environment.
This image was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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