View allAll Photos Tagged LargeMagellanicCloud
Our galaxy is surrounded by numerous ‘satellite’ galaxies, the largest being the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC is a complex mix of stars, gas and molecular clouds, and hosts many fascinating celestial objects and features – including the huge and luminous region of 30 Doradus, otherwise known as the Tarantula Nebula. This nebula is the most vigorous known star-forming region in the local Universe, and bright enough to be clearly visible from Earth’s southern hemisphere with the naked eye.
The LMC also houses a feature named the ‘X-ray spur’. Formed of gas so hot that its constituent atoms have split into charged particles (a form of matter known as plasma), the X-ray spur is a large, extended, triangular structure that lies to the south of the Tarantula Nebula and stretches out for almost half the diameter of the LMC itself. The spur emits far more energetic X-rays than we would typically expect from the plasma in a galaxy, and so it has intrigued scientists studying the local cosmos.
Researchers have now used ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory to explore the emission streaming from the X-ray spur at multiple wavelengths. They find that the gas making up the spur is far hotter than gas in other parts of the LMC. It is similar to the temperatures found in the region around the Tarantula Nebula, which is heated by the numerous young, massive stars forming within it. However, there are no signs of star formation – either past or present – in the spur.
So, what is causing these extreme temperatures? The scientists think that the spur is heated by two giant clouds of cool hydrogen gas that are in the process of colliding – and heating up their surroundings in the process. These clouds are shown in this image of the south-eastern part of the LMC in green and red, with their mapping based on combined data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array and Parkes 21 cm multibeam survey (both CSIRO, Australia). XMM-Newton’s X-ray data – from the spacecraft’s European Photon Imaging Camera, or EPIC – is shown in blue, and traces the X-ray spur as it lies directly between these two colliding clouds. The researchers predict that the spur will eventually evolve into a stellar nursery like its neighbour, the Tarantula Nebula (see location of the nebula in this image).
Additionally, two sets of contours are overlaid on the image: the cyan contours show carbon monoxide emission from molecular clouds, which are high-density regions that harbour new star-forming regions (based on data from the 4m NANTEN telescope, located at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and operated by Nagoya University, Japan). The magenta contours, meanwhile, track ‘H-alpha’ emission — patches of hydrogen where incoming radiation from massive stars has caused the gas to lose electrons (based on H-alpha data from the Magellanic Clouds Emission Line Survey, obtained by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile).
The image shows a patch of sky centred at a right ascension (RA) of roughly 5h37m00s and declination (Dec) of approximately -69°30’00” to -70°00’00”. This celestial coordinate system is used to identify locations in space, with Dec and RA being analogous to terrestrial latitude and longitude, respectively.
Credits: Knies et al. (2021)
N132D is the remnant of an exploded star in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The 1999 Chandra image shows a highly structured remnant, or shell, of 10-million-degree gas that is 80 light years across. The remnant is thought to be about 3,000 years old. The Large Magellanic Cloud, a companion galaxy to the Milky Way, is 160,000 light years from Earth.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO
Floating in the sky above two of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) Auxiliary Telescopes are a pair of ethereal shapes. These are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — two of the 50 or so satellite galaxies that orbit our more massive Milky Way.
Despite being small compared to the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds still contain billions of stars. The Large Magellanic Cloud, in the bottom-right of the image, has a diameter of 14 000 light-years, and the Small Magellanic Cloud in the top-centre is 7000 light-years across. At distances of about 160 000 light-years and 200 000 light-years respectively these satellite galaxies are much closer to the Milky Way than our nearest major galaxy, Andromeda, 2.5 million light-years away, making them some of our closest neighbours.
The faint red emission in the sky is called airglow, and it's light naturally emitted by atoms and molecules high up in the atmosphere, oxygen in this case.
These ghostly galaxies can only be seen in the southern hemisphere, in skies that are unpolluted by light from cities. This is one of the reasons that ESO operates the VLT in the remote Chilean Atacama Desert — so that we can study such beguiling objects as the Magellanic Clouds.
Credit: ESO/ M. Zamani
Nightscaping lately has been far and few between, but a few weeks ago I decided to return to a location I stumbled across one time when I took a wrong turn and found a derelict farm house just off the freeway ( carlosoruephotography.com/2013/11/20/an-outback-sunset/ ). My initial thoughts were I wonder if it's still there or has it been knocked down or renovated? To my delight I found it just the way I left it almost 4 years ago.
Not game to jump the fence 4 years ago, this time I felt more adventurous and I really wanted to try and capture it from the best possible angle. The skies played their part, crystal clear with the Milky Way just above the chimney and the Magellanic clouds (distant galaxies) floating over the old tin roof. Even the Southern Cross made it into the frame on the top right corner of the photograph.
The inside of the house was completely gutted, no doors, no glass windows and the floors were a few wooden planks held together by rusty nails floating above a false bottom floor a metre or so off the ground.
The four Auxiliary Telescopes at ESO’s Paranal Observatory can be seen gazing up to the night sky in this Picture of the Week. With dark and pristine skies, Paranal is one of the best places on Earth to study the universe from. As seen in this spectacular image, the view is really full to the brim of exciting things to look at.
For instance, take a closer look to the right of the Milky Way band, at the two clouds that look like galactic fireworks. These are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, dwarf galaxies that are trapped by the gravity of the Milky Way. In the Mapuche language in south-central Chile they are known as lafken, labken or künchalabken (“the lagoons”), and also rünanko (“the water wells”). [1]
Peering closer to the horizon we see subtle shades of green and red, but what is it? This is called airglow and is faint light emitted atoms and molecules in the atmosphere. This can happen through various mechanisms, like interaction with solar radiation or chemical reactions between molecules. Green airglow comes from oxygen atoms, whereas the red one is due to both oxygen atoms and hydroxyl molecules. Check this ESO cast to learn more about how airglow is created and why Chile is a particularly good place to see it.
Note: [1] Source: Wenumapu. Astronomía y Cosmología Mapuche, Gabriel Pozo Menares & Margarita Canio Llanquinao
Credit: ESO/Juan Carlos Muñoz Mateos
The Milky Way above the limestone stacks of Gog and Magog - two of the 12 Apostles off the southern coast of Victoria in Australia - a couple of weeks ago. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), 160,000 light years away, is in the top centre of the shot and just below it is the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), all of 200,000 light years away.
The Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, is a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. At about 163,000 light years away. The large red section to the lower right is the Tarantula Nebula, the most active star forming region in the Local Group.
Canon 6D
Sigma 70-200 f2.8
20sec, f4
iso6400
25 images stacked in DSS
Tracked with a Vixen Polarie
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the remnants of a long-dead star. These rippling wisps of ionised gas, named DEM L316A, are located some 160 000 light-years away within one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbours — the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).
The explosion that formed DEM L316A was an example of an especially energetic and bright variety of supernova , known as a Type Ia. Such supernova events are thought to occur when a white dwarf star steals more material than it can handle from a nearby companion, and becomes unbalanced. The result is a spectacular release of energy in the form of a bright, violent explosion, which ejects the star’s outer layers into the surrounding space at immense speeds. As this expelled gas travels through the interstellar material, it heats it up and ionise it, producing the faint glow that Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 has captured here.
The LMC orbits the Milky Way as a satellite galaxy and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies, the Local Group. DEM L316A is not alone in the LMC; Hubble came across another one in 2010 with SNR 0509 (heic1018), and in 2013 it snapped SNR 0519 (potw1317a).
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Y. Chu
Nikon D5 + 14-24mm f/2.8G | Atacama Desert, Chile, 10 April 2016
© 2016 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
Do not use without permission. 2016.04.10_107353
Here in Australia, we recognise our seasons as commencing on the first day of a calendar quarter. Winter begins on the first day of June. Spring, the first of September. With today being the second of December, we’ve already had one full day of summer pass by. That means it is six months since I was shivering through a winter night, shooting nightscape images using these silos in the foreground. It certainly doesn’t feel like it was that long ago!
With the Milky Way’s galactic core now lost in the brightness of the evening twilight–Milky Way season is over–you will likely see more posts from me and other nightscape photographers featuring star-trails and deep-sky objects.
I had planned to shoot at least two hours worth of star-trails at the silos last night, but a very thick fog floated in and put an end to that. The trails I did get were long enough to make a good image from, and I even achieved a result I’d set out to get, which was some trails showing between the silos and through the holes in the perishing roof. There is a fog-piercing light a few hundred metres along the road from the silos, and it provided an eerie glow to back-light the scene.
To create this final image I shot 123 single-frame photos in 55 minutes. I captured each of those frames with a Canon EOS 6D camera, fitted with a Samyang 14mm XP lens @ f/2.8, exposed for 25 seconds @ ISO 800.
Here is a nice photo that we captured of the Large Magellanic cloud using My DSLR 600D ESO canon camera attached to our Meade LX90-8-inch SCT with Tracking. This is a raw image with no processing involved.
Another Milky Way shot from Australia - a trip across the Simpson Desert in June last year. Note how the Milky Way is "upside down" compared to this November 2017 shot of the Gibson Steps.
Our campsite was just north of the QAA Line on the border between Queensland and the Northern Territory. The moon was just setting but there was still enough fading light to show up the foreground. The Small Magellanic Cloud is clearly visible in the centre while the Large Magellanic Cloud is a bit fuzzier as it's just above the horizon.
EXIF: 14mm; f/2.8; 30 secs; ISO3200.
35mm
53 x 10 seconds
ISO 5000
f/1.8
Stitched in MS ICE
This is a 53 image panorama taken at Harvey Dam, approximately 125km (100mi) south of Perth in Western Australia. The Large & Small Magellanic Clouds can be see near the horizon just right of centre. The light pollution is coming from the Worsley Alumina Refinery approximately 15km away.
+LMC, SMC
Wyberba, Queensland, Australia
Nikon D810A 14mm F2.8 ISO3200 30sec
SAMYANG 14mm F2.8 ED AS IF UMC
Time: 2019/01/31
Place: York, Western Australia, Australia
Equipment: Canon 6D (mod) +Sigma 135art
Parameter: ISO1600, F2.8, 60s*78
A handful of sheep stood atop this hill, silhouetted by the lights of the rural city of Goulburn, Australia, while I photographed the starry and cloud-free sky at the Taralga wind farm in mid-November of this year. High overhead and looking like a tuft of wool, cut free and discarded by a shearer’s blades, the amorphous glow from the billions of stars forming the Large Magellanic is the standout feature of today’s photo.
The background sky is showing a purplish tint, caused by the presence of what scientists call “airglow” in the Earth’s atmosphere, which human eyes cannot see, sadly. Dark nebulae in the Milky Way show themselves as dimmer patches in the sky near the horizon, as they block the light from stars more distant than these enormous bodies of gas and dust.
I shot two overlapping frames to create this final image, using my Canon EOS 6D Mk II Digital SLR camera fitted with a Sigma 35 mm wide-angle lens. Each photo was taken using the same settings, which were a shutter speed of 8.0 seconds, a lens aperture of f/1.6, and an ISO selection of 6400.
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Image exposure: 52 min (104 x 30s)
Image Field of View: 24.3º x 16.2º
Image date: 2025–03-01
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This image of our cosmic near neighbour was taken using a Canon 60D DSLR on a Skywatcher Star Adventurer tracking mount.
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Fifty [stacked] 30-sec exposures spanning approx. 25 min and showing Earth's rotation around the South Celestial Pole (SCP). Notice the meteor passing near the SCP and above Yepun (Venus in Mapuche), the fourth VLT Unit Telescope. The stacked image was then combined with the first frame in the sequence to produce the SCP-centered gradient effect. Photographed from the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) in Cerro Paranal, Chile.
© 2009 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
See the resulting video, cumulative video, Milky Way shot, Magellanic Clouds shot
Equipment: D810A+Sigma 40art+Sky memo rs(unguide)
Parameter: F2.8, ISO800, 300s*1 (4-frame mosaic)
Time: 2019/02/05 03:30
Place: York, Western Australia, Australia
Author: 陳麒瑞、王派鏹
The Total integration time is 20 minutes. (four-frame mosaic)
Here is 0.5x reduced versions.
Data from the iTelescope Network (we can't see this object from the UK!) given to me to play with by Pete Williamson.
Red: 3 x 3 minutes
Green: 3 x 3 minutes
Blue: 3 x 3 minutes
H-alpha: 2 x 3 minutes
Each channel's data was stacked and processed separately in Photoshop. When I combined the data I tried several different channel combinations, but I got the best results when the red was pasted into the green channel, green into the red channel and blue left as blue. Once I'd processed the merged image I then blended in the H-alpha into the red channel.
Stacking was done in Deep Sky Stacker. Processing was done in Photoshop CS2, Lightroom and Fast Stone Image Viewer
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of around 50 kiloparsecs (≈160,000 light-years) the LMC is the second or third closest galaxy to the Milky Way. It is only visible from the southern hemisphere.
In general, artificial light is not the friend of astronomers and astrophotographers. When it gets in the way of our observing or our photography, we refer to it as “light pollution”, a name that doesn’t have any hint of positivity at all. For this photo, though, I used artificial light in the form of my LED Lenser headlamp/torch to make some inner light seem to beam and burn out from the windows of this little church. Of course, the celestial lights above the church are the reason I was at this spot taking photos, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance to give this old house of worship some inner light to brighten the scene. The two Magellanic Cloud galaxies were too lovely to pass up and I think they add much to this photo.
Although I could have captured this scene with a single image, I used nine shots from a 65-frame panorama that I was creating on the night. I photographed each of those nine images with a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, using a 15-second exposure @ ISO 6400.
A true southern showpiece inside our nearby dwarf galaxy neighbour, the Large Magellanic Cloud. A giant cloud of gas and dust where young stars are being born, sculpting the web like shapes you see here. Fun fact: if it were as close as the Orion Nebula, it would be bright enough to cast shadows.
Equipment
Telescope: Askar 130PHQ
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
Mount: Sky Watcher EQ6 Pro
Acquisition
Integration: 33h 30′
Hα: 62×600″(10h 20′)
SII: 73×600″(12h 10′)
OIII: 66×600″(11h)
Bortle 6 - Hillcrest QLD
Astrobin (HQ): app.astrobin.com/i/20ujqg
All socials: linktr.ee/deepskyjourney
Here is another collage I made, this evening. Starting from the Top left is the Northern Pleiades, the top right is the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Middle photo is Orion's Nebula, the bottom left is the Southern Pleiades and the bottom right is the Small Magellanic cloud with the globular cluster called the 47 Tuc. The 47 tuc is the bright object just off to the bottom right of the small Magellanic cloud.
To get a better view, you may need to zoom in a little.
Nikon d5500
50mm
ISO 4000
f/2.8
Foreground: 19 x 20 seconds
Sky: 86 x 30 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
Hoya Red Intensifier filter
This is a 105 shot panorama of the Milky Way setting over Lake Ninan, 2 hours north east of Perth in Western Australia. The light pollution on the left is from the nearby Wheatbelt town of Calingiri.
50mm
124 x 6 seconds
ISO 3200
f/2.0
Stitched in MS ICE
Lake Lescehnaultia is a man made reservoir created to supply water for steam trains for half a century from the late 1890's. It's now a recreational and camping area located just outside the Perth metropolitan area.
The light pollution from the city can be seen in the right hand side of the image along with the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds. The lights on the left are from the camping grounds. The image covers approximately 180 degrees of the night sky. Originally coming out of the stitching program at 1.6 gigapixels, it has since been trimmed down to 500 megapixels due to Lightroom's size limitations (get your act together Adobe!!).
Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud over the 3.9 metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (Australian National University), located at Siding Spring Observatory, NSW. Shot on a very windy night on April 18, 2018. Note the greenish airglow.
Canon 6D, Rokinon 14mm
Taken in April, 2018 during the inaugural Astrophotography / iTelescope Masterclass held by Dr. Christian Sasse.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a sparkling cloudscape from one of the Milky Way’s galactic neighbors, a dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Located 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the Milky Way’s many small satellite galaxies.
This view of dusty gas clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud is possible thanks to Hubble’s cameras, such as the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that collected the observations for this image. WFC3 holds a variety of filters, and each lets through specific wavelengths, or colors, of light. This image combines observations made with five different filters, including some that capture ultraviolet and infrared light that the human eye cannot see.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
#NASAMarshall #NASA #NASAHubble #Hubble #NASAGoddard #galaxy #dwarfgalaxy #LargeMagellanicCloud
Nikon d810a
50mm
ISO 3200
f/3.2
Foreground: 6 x 15 seconds
Sky: 25 x 30 seconds
H-Alpha: 8 x 60 seconds
iOptron SkyTracker
This is a 39 shot panorama of the Milky Way rising above a lone tree on a farm at Contine, 1.5 hours south east of Perth in Western Australia.
Prominent in this image are the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds to the right, small satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way. Just right of centre at the very top is the pink coloured Carina Nebula while just below that is the dark CoalSack Nebula with Crux (Southern Cross) to its immediate left.
I used an h-alpha filter to highlight the various red coloured hydrogen alpha emitting regions, most prominent in and around the core area on the left.
A scene from a star-forming factory shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This Hubble picture captures incredible details in the dusty clouds in a star-forming region called the Tarantula Nebula. What’s possibly the most amazing aspect of this detailed image is that this nebula isn’t even in our galaxy. Instead, it’s in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is located about 160 000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.
The Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the dozens of small satellite galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. The Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region not just in the Large Magellanic Cloud, but in the entire group of nearby galaxies to which the Milky Way belongs.
The Tarantula Nebula is home to the most massive stars known, some of which are roughly 200 times as massive as our Sun. The scene pictured here is located away from the centre of the nebula, where there is a super star cluster called R136, but very close to a rare type of star called a Wolf–Rayet star. Wolf–Rayet stars are massive stars that have lost their outer shell of hydrogen and are extremely hot and luminous, powering dense and furious stellar winds.
This nebula is a frequent target for Hubble, whose multiwavelength capabilities are critical for capturing sculptural details in the nebula’s dusty clouds. The data used to create this image come from an observing programme called Scylla, named for a multi-headed sea monster from the Greek myth of Ulysses. The Scylla programme was designed to complement another Hubble observing programme called ULYSSES (Ultraviolet Legacy library of Young Stars as Essential Standards). ULYSSES targets massive young stars in the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, while Scylla investigates the structures of gas and dust that surround these stars.
[Image Description: A nebula. The top-left is dense with layers of fluffy pink and greenish clouds. Long strands of green clouds stretch out from here; a faint layer of translucent blue dust combines with them to create a three-dimensional scene. A sparse network of dark dust clouds in the foreground adds reddish-black patches atop the nebula. Blue-white and orange stars, from our galaxy and beyond, are spread amongst the clouds.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray; CC BY 4.0
The Milky Way in the southern hemisphere sky from Canis Major at top right to Centaurus at bottom left, from Sirius to Alpha Centauri. At centre is the huge Gum Nebula emission nebula bubble. At left of centre is the Carina Nebula. At bottom is the Large Magellanic Cloud with the star Canopus above it. Crux, the Southern Cross, is at lower left.
This is a stack of 5 x 3-minute tracked exposures with the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII camera at ISO 2000 and 14mm Rokinon SP lens at f/2.5. No filter was employed. On the iOptron Sky-Tracker, from Tibuc Gardens Cottage, Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia. Re-processed in 2024.
Taken with a Sony Cybershot DSC-RX1R Full Frame camera.
NOTE
The glow on the horizon is from a nearby mine, which has subsequently closed.
LINK
Other images from this series:
1. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51199386058/
2. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51198465367/
3. www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51199384178/
Reworking of a previous shot from a wonderful 2014 trip.
To the west of the great Brandberg Massif in Namibia lies the remote Ugab River Rhino Camp, the most remote of the campsites we stayed in.
It's only accessible by a 4x4 vehicle and you pass through almost lunar landscapes to get to it, but it was worth the visit: lovely hot showers and tremendously dark skies.
Here's a shot of the campsite, with the Milky Way above the hills. You can just make out the Large Magellanic Cloud just above the horizon behind the second vehicle.
"Over 120 million years ago, a single mass of granite punched through the Earth’s crust and intruded into the heart of the Namib Desert in what is now northern Namibia. Today the mountain of rock called the Brandberg Massif towers over the arid desert below. A ring of dark, steep-sided rocks forced upward during the mountain’s arrival encircles the granite intruder.
The locals call it Dâures—the burning mountain. Its volcanism has long since stilled, but the granite core left behind apparently glows red in the light of the setting sun. The formation is a remnant of a long period of tumultuous volcanic and geologic activity on Earth during which the southern super-continent of Gondwana was splitting apart.
The mountain influences the local climate, drawing more rain to its flanks than the desert below receives. The rain filters into the mountain’s deep crevices and slowly seeps out through springs. Unique plant and animal communities thrive in its high-altitude environment, and prehistoric cave paintings decorate walls hidden in the steep cliffs that gouge the mountain.
To the southwest of Brandberg Massif, an older and more-eroded granite intrusion blends in subtly with the desert landscape, while along the Ugab River at upper left, cracks line the brown face of an ancient plain of rock transformed into gneiss by heat, pressure, and time."
This is the Large Magellanic Cloud, the main Local Group member and a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, some 160,000 light years away, It is visible only from the southern hemisphere. Nowhere else in the sky do we see such a profuse collection of star-forming nebulas as here in this frame the width typical of binocular fields, about 7.5° by 5º.
The LMC is a dwarf irregular galaxy though with structures that resemble a barred spiral galaxy. Tidal disruptions caused by its passage near our Galaxy are sparking an intense level of star formation and star death – some of the nebulas are bubbles blown out by exploding or dying stars.
The main region of nebulosity is the massive Tarantula Nebula complex (NGC 2070) at left, with its twisted and tortured structure. The other main area is the NGC 1763 complex at upper right. At upper left are the nebulas NGC 2020 and NGC 1955, among many others. At lower right is the NGC 1748 complex. At lower left is NGC 2018.
However, the region is so rich it is hard to identify which object is which, especially as most atlases don't agree on the labels. Even amateur photos such as this reveal patches of nebulosity that are not plotted as such on star charts.
While many of the nebulas are red or pink from hydrogen alpha emission, many are cyan from predominant oxygen III emission.
This is a blend of images taken through a dual-band nebula filter and without any filter. This is a stack of 12 x 10-minute exposures at ISO 3200 through an IDAS NBZ dual-band (OIII and H-a) filter that adds most of the nebulosity, blended with a stack of 20 x 5-minute exposures at ISO 800 with no filter for the main "natural light" background content.
The Canon EOS R camera I used was modified by AstroGear.net to be more sensitive to H-a light. It was on the little Sharpstar 61mm EDPH III refractor with its Reducer for f/4.4, and on the Astro-Physics AP400 mount autoguided with the Lacerta MGEN III stand-alone auto-guider. Inter-frame dithering eliminated hot pixels on this warm night. No dark frames were employed.
Taken March 4, 2024 on a perfect autumn night at the Mirrabook Cottage near Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia and down the hill, literally, from the Siding Spring Observatory. While the camera was shooting I enjoyed touring the southern Milky Way with binoculars. It was stargazing heaven!
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image 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 nearby star-forming regions. 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, weighing roughly 200 times the mass of the Sun.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
#NASAMarshall #NASA #NASAHubble #Hubble #NASAGoddard #galaxy #TarantulaNebula
Large and Small Magellanic Clouds in the busy night sky filled with stars and satellites over Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
One of my favourite shots from Namibia is of this quiver tree taken at Canyon Lodge, a wonderful place to stay near the Fish River Canyon.
A quiver tree is a type of aloe that is really only found in southern Namibia and the Cape province in South Africa. In this shot, it is lit up by the parking lights of our car which was parked about 100m away. The sky was incredibly dark and the Milky Way looked amazing that night.
If you look closely enough, you can see a little meteorite travelling through the Large Magellanic Cloud to the right of the quiver tree. I only noticed it when I was processing the photo some time later.
The Tarantula nebula known as 30 Doradus and part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Photographed using Telescope live. Stacked with Photoshop and coloured with siril software
The center of the Milky Way begins to rise behind the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) on this first day of Spring. To the right, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (SMC and LMC), two dwarf galaxies 200,000 and 160,000 light years away, respectively. South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), Sutherland, South Africa, 20 Mar 2010.
© 2010 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively) are two dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. This image shows the stellar density of the satellite galaxies as seen by Gaia in its Early Data Release 3, which was made public on 3 December 2020. It is composed of red, green and blue layers, which trace mostly the older, intermediate age, and younger stars respectively.
Astronomers place stars into categories that are often named for their colour and appearance.
In this image, the red layer contains evolved stars that compose the Red Giant Branch and Red Clump stars. The green layer contains Main Sequence stars of mixed ages of up to two billion years. The blue layer contains stars younger than 400 million years, Asymptotic Giant Branch stars, and RR-Lyrae and classical Cepheid variable stars.
The brightnesses used in this image are based on a logarithmic scale to enhance low surface density regions in the galaxies, for example the outer spiral arm in the LMC visible in the upper left.
The density of younger stars has been artificially enhanced with respect to the other evolutionary phases to make them more clearly visible. This shows that younger stars mostly trace the inner spiral structure of the LMC, and the ‘bridge’ of stars between the two galaxies. Finally, intermediate age and older stars trace the LMC bar, spiral arms, and outer halo, as well as the SMC outer halo.
Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Acknowledgement: L. Chemin; X. Luri et al (2020)
Description: This composite image contains X-ray data from Chandra (green and blue) that show heated material in the center of a shell generated by a supernova explosion. Optical data from Hubble show the glowing pink rim, which is ambient gas being shocked by the blast wave from the supernova, as well as the surrounding star field. The Type Ia supernova that resulted in the creation of this remnant would have been visible from Earth some 400 years ago.
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: 2010
Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/snr0509/
Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Gift line: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Hughes et al, Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Accession number: snr0509_469
The Milky Way seen from the bottom of the Gibson Steps, on the southern coast of Victoria in Australia. There is zero light pollution and the Milky Way and dark dusty nebula like the Coalsack are clearly visible to the naked eye but the wonders of a modern digital camera and a little post-processing bring out details that the human eye can't see. Deus ex machina.
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), 160,000 light years away, is in the top right of the shot and just below it is the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), all of 200,000 light years away.
The supernova explosion that created this object was first observed on Earth in February 1987. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory sees X-rays produced by debris from the explosion. X-rays from Chandra (purple); optical and infrared from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue); infrared from the James Webb Space Telescope (red, green, and blue)
At the center of this composite image is a small object resembling a glowing pink Cheerio. This is supernova SN 1987A, named after the year the core-collapse explosion was first observed on Earth. It is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small nearby galaxy. The pink Cheerio, or equatorial ring, represents material ejected tens of thousands of years before the supernova explosion. The blast wave from the supernova is striking the ring, causing it to produce X-rays detected by Chandra. Inside this ring is a pale, steel blue dot containing debris from the star that exploded.. The ring sits at the center of a ghostly figure 8, outlined in brick orange. This entire structure is surrounded by a packed field of stars, specks and dots in white, blue, and orange. A long, brick orange cloud hovers near the left edge of the image.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical/Infrared: NASA/ESA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major
#NASAMarshall #NASA #astrophysics #NASAChandra #NASA #galaxy #supernova #LargeMagellanicCloud
So much to see in the southern night skies. Here's another night shot from Terrigal, New South Wales.
The Carina Nebula is the bright fuzzy patch at the top centre, above the Southern Cross in the dead centre of the shot. At the bottom are the two really bright stars Alpha Centauri and Rigil Kentaurus, pointing towards the cross.
At the extreme top right of the shot is the wonderful Large Magellanic Cloud.