Large Magellanic Cloud - Narrowband (Rodney Watters)

Large Magellanic Cloud - Narrowband

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a classic and well visited object for southern observers. At my latitude (33.5 degrees south), it is readily accessible and a great target for wide field imaging. The LMC is replete with many deep sky objects including super nova remnants (SNRs), star clusters and many nebulae and this narrowband rendition shows off many of these spectacular deep sky treasures. For reasons unknown, the background plate solving tool in Astrobin couldn't solve this image so I have plate solved it independently with Pixinsight and included the annotated version as a mouse over.

This image has been captured with a monochrome full frame CMOS camera (ZWO ASI6200) and Canon EF200mm f2.8 lens. This combination gives a 10d x 7d field of view, is ideal for capturing objects such as the LMC in a single field. The Canon lens has been stopped down to f5.6 (mechanically using an aperture step down ring) to improve the off axis aberrations that can be apparent when running these lenses fully open.

It became quite evident in post processing that there was a significant amount of signal surrounding the main body of the LMC so some research was required to identify whether this was due to Galactic Cirrus, a light gradient or a structure associated with the LMC. This research has shown that the image does in fact show extended spiral structures around the galaxy. These structures are also evident in a number of other wide field LMC images posted here on Astrobin. The extended faint halo that can be seen surrounding the galaxy in this image is therefore real.

Final
Original
B

B

Title: Annotated Plate Solve

Description: Using PI to Plate Solve and annotate the image

Uploaded: ...

PixInsight Addicts

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9142528
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):