NGC 346 - Star Forming Region in SMC (Martin Howard)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Tucana (Tuc) · Contains: IC 1611 · IC 1612 · NGC 346

NGC 346 - Star Forming Region in SMC, Martin Howard

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NGC 346 - Star Forming Region in SMC

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NGC 346 - Star Forming Region in SMC

A star forming region within the Small Magellanic Cloud. It is about 200 light years across and the SMC is about 210,000 light years away. By comparison, the Orion Nebula is about 24 light years across but is of course much closer to us. You can see the star cluster in the heart of the blueish nebula whose intense radiation is causing the clouds of gas to glow. It is very rich in oxygen as indicated by the blue nebulosity which stands out from the hydrogen clouds that dominate that region of space. Recently some astronomers have discovered that stars are spiralling in toward the centre of the nebula.

I captured the image over several nights in the second half of December. It is a narrow band image made up of Ha and OIII subs and combined as HOO. I also took images through RGB filters for the stars and used BlurXterminator in my processing. Due to the distance, a longer focal length is required to image it up close. In this case, the focal length used was 1200 mm using my Celestron C6 and Starizona reducer at f/8.

New Zealand Astrophotography

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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.

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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.
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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6875104
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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NGC 346 - Star Forming Region in SMC

NGC 346 - Star Forming Region in SMC

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Image Index:

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NGC 346 - Star Forming Region in SMC

NGC 346 - Star Forming Region in SMC

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