The Milky Way’s nearest galaxy, as seen through amateur eyes
The Universe is full of astronomical wonders, but it’s up to humanity to observe and analyze them.
The key factors determining what we can reveal are resolution, light-gathering power, and the wavelengths filters we choose.
Professionals have larger, more powerful telescopes with superior instruments, but amateurs have the advantage of time.
Observing an object for four times as long gathers as much light as a telescope twice as large.
This is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC): the closest large galaxy to our own.
It’s the local group’s 4th largest galaxy, located just 160,000 light-years away.
It’s huge from our perspective, spanning 5° across: 10 times the full Moon’s diameter.
Equipped with a 160-mm (6.3″) telescope, a team of amateur astronomers constructed a record 204,000,000 pixel image of the LMC.
With a total of 1060 hours of observation time, 620 GB of data were synthesized in creating this mosaic.
The narrow-wavelength filters allowed the identification of hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen, plus red/green/blue color.
The mosaic includes the Tarantula Nebula: the largest star-forming region in the entire local group.
Ciel Austral now holds the longest-exposure record for amateur astronomy.
Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals, and no more than 200 words. Talk less; smile more.
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