It's spider season & I've been cooking up this beast for a while.
But with the dire weather all this week, I decided instead to blend my new Ha & O3 data with some S2 data that I captured from 2016 - an interesting experiment that seems to have worked out ok
A Southern beauty, this nebula dominates the Large Magellenic Cloud. Were it closer to earth it would leave shadows! The Tarantula Nebula is a giant star forming region about 180 thousand light-years away and more than a thousand light-years in diameter.
The largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies, the cosmic arachnid sprawls across this spectacular view composed with narrowband data centred on emission from ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Within the Tarantula (NGC 2070), intense radiation, stellar winds and supernova shocks from the central young cluster of massive stars, cataloged as R136, energize the nebular glow and shape the spidery filaments.
Around the Tarantula are other star forming regions with young star clusters, filaments, and blown-out bubble-shaped clouds. But were the Tarantula Nebula closer, say 1,500 light-years distant like the local star forming Orion Nebula, it would take up half the sky. (Apod)
Taken from lockdown central, Melbourne , Australia. Oct 2020
Processed in APP & PS CC 2020 with a touch of Eric Coles Histogram balancing technique.
ASTROBIN