A widefield narrowband image containing the Large Magellanic cloud and the Tarantula Nebula as well as numerous other NGC objects. First mentioned in 964 A.D. and called Al Bakr, "the white ox" by Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi, a Persian astronomer. Ferdinand Magellan brought this neighbor galaxy into common western knowledge 600 years later in 1519 and the galaxy now bears his name. The Tarantula nebula is part of the LMC and probably its most interesting object. The LMC contains as many as 60 globular clusters, 400 planetary nebula and 700 open clusters. The distance, by Cepheid variable observation is 157,000 light years and is the third closest galaxy to our solar system outside of the Milky Way. The 72 images making up this picture were taken at Heaven's gate observatory in Australia, as part of the Telescope Live system. Images were taken at a FOV of 324' and a scale of 4.74"/pixel so fairly under sampled. The image was taken through a Takahashi FSQ106 at f3.5 with an FLI16803 CCD camera.
While the background and cloud look noisy, it's actually stars that you see.. lots and lots and lots of stars. An amazing area of the sky and I hope I get to look at it personally some day.
Terri
Nice image. Even with that scope it doesn't all fit in the field. Careful though, with commercial remote imaging you may decide it's more convenient than hauling your equipment out to your driveway 🙂
Paul
Nice image. Even with that scope it doesn't all fit in the field. Careful though, with commercial remote imaging you may decide it's more convenient than hauling your equipment out to your driveway 🙂
Paul
Thanks Paul. It's allowing me to work on my skills during this dull dreary months.
I'm not hanging up my cameras and scopes just yet.
Terri
