NGC 2070 - Tarantula Nebula. An object worth flying halfway around the world and reaching the southern hemisphere for.

The nebula, also known as 30 Doradus from the star's name, is a vast hydrogen region within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), forming its southeastern corner (from our Earthly perspective). Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille cataloged it during an expedition to the Cape of Good Hope (December 5, 1751), designating it as a nebula. The colloquial name Tarantula stems from its distinctive appearance revealed by early 20th-century photographs.

This is a relatively bright extragalactic object considering its distance (approximately 160,000 light-years) with an apparent magnitude of around 8. It is also one of the most extensive H II regions in the Local Group, estimated to have a diameter of about 200 x 570 parsecs (angular sizes from Earth are 40' × 25'). It’s safe to say it possesses a unique appearance with no bright counterpart in our galaxy. Its somewhat cavernous structure, with voids and dense regions, indicates intense processes within, which indeed is the case. Internal shells expand at speeds exceeding 100,000 km/h, likely formed by collective winds from subsequent generations of powerful hot blue stars and their supernovae, carving deep cavities and filaments in the hydrogen gas clouds where these stars were born. This also leads to high star-forming activity. At the nebula's center lies the young cluster of massive stars cataloged as R136.

The evolutionary characteristics of stars suggest that this complex has experienced at least 40 supernovae in the last 10,000 years, including the most recent, SN 1987A.

A few words about the image itself. The picture was taken with a TS APO 65Q refractor and an ASI 294MC camera, using the HOO palette due to the Optolong L-Enhance filter employed. Stars posed an issue as I couldn't manage to photograph them in RGB. However, photometric calibration in Pixinsight helped, though they're far from perfect.

Summary of technical details and material acquisition:
TS APO 65Q, ZWO ASI 294MC Pro: Optolong L-Enhance: G: 120
56x300 seconds