Our Neighbour Galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud

One of our nearest galactic neighbours contains an astonishing collection of nebulas and star clusters.

This is the money shot — top of my list for targets on this trip to Australia. This is the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. At “just” 160,000 light years away, the LMC is in our galactic backyard. Being so close, even the small 77mm telescope I used to take this image resolves numerous nebulas, star clusters, and a mass of individual stars. The image actually looks “noisy” from being filled with so many stars.

I’ve oriented and framed the Cloud to take in most of its main structure and objects. One can spend many nights just visually exploring all that the LMC contains. It alone is worth the trip to the southern hemisphere.

At left is the massive Tarantula Nebula, a.k.a. NGC 2070. At upper right is the LMC’s second best nebula, the often overlooked NGC 1763, also known as the LMC Lagoon. In between are many other magenta and cyan tinted nebulas.

I’ve shot this object several times but this is my best shot so far I think, and my first with this optical system in several years.

I used a Borg 77mm aperture “astrograph,” a little refractor telescope optimized for imaging. It is essentially a 330mm f/4 telephoto lens, but one that is tack sharp across the entire field, far outperforming any camera telephoto lens.

This shot is a stack of six 10-minute exposures at ISO 800 with the filter-modified Canon 5D MkII camera. The autoguider worked perfectly. And yet, I shot this in clear breaks between bands of clouds moving though last night. The night was humid but when the sky was clear it was very clear.

Next target when skies permit: the Vela Supernova Remnant.

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