Latest astro-imagery from our backyard on Sunday night, when I spent 5 hours and 20 minutes gathering light that has traveled for 160,000 years from a small area internal to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC is in the constellation of Dorado (the ‘Swordfish’) and is a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way Galaxy. In this view, from a small area internal to the LMC, we can see a number of objects – namely NGC2014, NGC2020, NGC2029, NGC2032, NGC2035 and NGC2040. To get a perspective on the area I have imaged you can chase down the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9QDrbqZggU

Light emissions from hydrogen gas (656.28nm) pass through the Ha optical filter on the telescope and I have processed these to red. Emissions from oxygen gas (using an O111 filter) are assigned to the blue and green channels.

NGC2014, in the lower part of the frame, that looks like a fiery ball of flame being hurled down to earth, is actually an ionised gas cloud comprised mostly of hydrogen, and is an emission nebula in which hydrogen gas is being ionised by ultraviolet radiation from a cluster of hot young stars that are embedded in the brightest part of this nebula. These stars also generate vigorous stellar winds that sculpt and disperse the surrounding hydrogen gas into the bubble-like nebula.

NGC2020 is the adjacent blue bubble-like nebula next to NGC2014. Instead of hydrogen gas being ionised, in NGC2020 it is oxygen gas that is being ionised, and not by a cluster of stars but by a single new-born star that lies in the core of the gas bubble and which has begun to sculpt out the surrounding gas cloud from which it condensed. The marked colour contrast between NGC2014 and NGC2020 in the lower part of the frame is what makes these areas within the Large Magellanic Cloud so spectacular to us human observers from the adjacent galaxy.

In the upper part of the frame lies a number of features. NGC 2040 is a loose cluster of stars located within the blue area of fluorescing oxygen gas that is embedded on the upper side of the intricate series of red shells of hydrogen gas. The series of concentric red bubbles of gas in the upper part of the frame are the LMC 4 supergiant gas shell. These shells of gas are the largest interstellar structures within galaxies, and are sculpted by stellar winds and internal supernova, the shock waves of which can trigger further episodes of star formation. Given time, thousands of stars can form within gas bubbles such as LMC 4.

NGC2032 (aka the “Seagull nebula”), NGC2035 (aka the ‘Dragons Head nebula’) and NGC2029 are the 3 clusters/scallops of (blue) oxygen gas, with subtle (red) hydrogen gas fringes, that collectively comprise the uppermost large light blue area of nebulosity.