LMC

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of around 163,000 light-years, the LMC is the second- or third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal and the possible dwarf irregular galaxy known as the Canis Major Overdensity. Based on readily visible stars and a mass of approximately 10 billion solar masses, the diameter of the LMC is about 14,000 light-years, making it roughly one one-hundredth as massive as the Milky Way. This makes the LMC the fourth-largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Milky Way, and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33).

The LMC is classified as a Magellanic spiral. It contains a stellar bar that is geometrically off-center, suggesting that it was a barred dwarf spiral galaxy before its spiral arms were disrupted, likely by tidal interactions from the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and the Milky Way's gravity.

With a declination of about −70°, the LMC is visible as a faint "cloud" from the southern hemisphere of the Earth and from as far north as 20° N. It straddles the constellations Dorado and Mensa and has an apparent length of about 10° to the naked eye, 20 times the Moon's diameter, from dark sites away from light pollution.

The Milky Way and the LMC are predicted to collide in approximately 2.4 billion years."

Click on Image for Higher Resolution

Date : November, December 2020
Location : Heaven's Mirror Observatory, Australia

Equipment used :
 Lens or telescope -- Takahashi FSQ-106ED
 Mount -- Paramount MX+ 

Camera -- FLI PL 9000

Acquistion Software :
Processing Software : PixInsight, Photoshop

Exposure Detail :  SynLRGB combination            Total hours 7.625