Possibly the southern skies greatest celestial wonder - the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a naked eye galaxy and the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy. It lies 160,000 light years away in the constellation Dorado (the Swordfish) and is being gravitationally disrupted by the Milky Way, which it is destined to merge with.

Ferdinand Magellan sighted the LMC on his 1519 voyage and brought it to Western knowledge despite being seen by night-time observes well back in pre-history. You need to be south of 20N to see the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The brightest part of the LMC is the central bar which is about 5 degrees long and 1 degree wide, making its central band 10 times as long as the full moon and twice as wide in terms of visual area in the sky for us observers on the earth.

2 hours and 5 minutes of exposure with Red, Green, Blue, Ha and O3 filters in the imaging set-up to image this galaxy. The Ha and O3 filters were used to highlight the concentrations of ionised hydrogen and oxygen gas that comprise nebula that are scattered shotgun like throughout this galaxy. Some of these nebula (shown in the pink and yellow hues) are gaseous nurseries that are birthing new stars (“star factories”) whilst others are supernova remnants from the explosion of dead stars that are now seeding the galaxy with heavier elements.

The brightest nebula complex is the Tarantula nebula which is yellow here as it is rich in both hydrogen (assigned to red) and oxygen (assigned to green) which combine to yield the yellow colouration in the rendition. The Tarantula nebula hosts some 500,000 stars. If the Tarantula nebula in this satellite galaxy was as close to us as the Great Nebula in Orion is at 1344 light years distance in our galaxy, it would cover 30 degrees of sky (not just one angular degree like the Orion Nebula), and would cast shadows at night.

Imaged from Goolwa, South Australia 27-01-2023.
Nikon 50mm f1.8D lens (@f4), ZWO filter wheel with broadband and narrowband filters, ZWO ASI600mm pro cooled astrophotography camera.
2 hours 5 mins integrated exposure with 1 minute sub-exposures (Red x 15m, Green x 15m, Blue x 15m, Ha x 40m and O3 x 40m). Sensor temp -20C, RGB gain 200, NB gain 300). Cropped.