Large Magellanic Cloud (ESO 56-115)

In August and September 2013, I spent some time at the Tivoli Astrofarm in Namibia, under the pristine southern skies. During that stay, I captured several deep images of the southern sky with my mobile imaging setup. One of these projects was the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), located in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.

The LMC is one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, lying about 160,000 light-years away, and it hosts a wealth of remarkable deep-sky objects — including vast star-forming regions such as the Tarantula Nebula (NGC 2070), numerous open clusters, and intricate dust lanes that weave through its stellar population. Capturing the galaxy in its entirety from the southern hemisphere was an unforgettable experience.

The data calibration, registration, and final image processing were all performed in PixInsight.

In the image you can find very many NGC objects, which are mainly parts of the LMC.

The images were taken with the following equipment:

• Date: 2013
• Location: Tivoli, Namibia
• Telescope: Canon 200mm lens
• Focal length [mm]: 200
• Focal ratio: 4
• Mount: Losmandy G11
• Camera: Canon 500 Da
• Filter: OSC
• Exposure time [min]: 195
• Resolution: 4.99″/px

My first attempt with the Large Magellanic cloud was during my stay at the Tivoli astrofarm in Namibia in July 2008.

Data calibration and registration was done with DeepSkyStacker and the final processing was done with PixInsight. The result was as follows:

The images were taken with the following equipment:

• Date: 2008
• Location: Tivoli, Namibia
• Telescope: Tamron 28-300mm lens
• Focal length [mm]: 70
• Focal ratio: 7.1
• Mount: Vixen Atlux
• Camera: Canon 300 Da
• Filter: OSC
• Exposure time [min]: 120
• Resolution: 24.61″/px