The Space Jockey

[Andy01]

Remember the ‘Space Jockey’ from the derelict spaceship in the first Alien movie?

Found him in the Large Magellenic Cloud with NGC 1925 & Friends. ;)

This image is a collaboration with my astro buddy ‘The Bluester’ (https://www.astrobin.com/users/the_bluester/) whose gear has a remarkably similar FOV to mine. :thanx:

Paul has rural Bortle 2/3 skies, and after plate solving a sub of mine to orient his camera, took nice clean RGB for the stars using the following...

SVX80-3SV with SFF4-80T field flattener,
ZWO ASI2600MC Pro camera,
32 X 120 second subs,
shot with Voyager.

I took the Narrowband data from my light polluted suburban Bortle 6/7 location in Melbourne.

There appear to be very few if any stand alone images of this fascinating target, that when rotated 90 degrees CCW also resembles an olympic swimmer on the starting blocks, or a busy cyclist!

Also of interest is an almost golden, irregular shaped globular cluster at 8 o’clock, and the distant galaxy in the top right cnr.

Tidal gravitational forces from the LMC's companion, the SMC and the Milky Way have resulted in many of these wacky irregular shaped nebulae present in this distorted barred spiral galaxy.

It’s an amazing region for us Southern Hemisphere folk to target! :D

ASTROBIN (https://www.astrobin.com/full/6ok0z2/0/)

[AdamJL]

Nice work and very nice of someone to shot the RGB stars for you

A very interesting target!

Plus, with Alien being one of my favourite movies because of the Derelict sequence, this is now a target on my hit list :)

[Andy01]

Cheers Adam, I love the first two Alien movies as well! :ship2:
Glad you enjoyed the image too. :D

[JA]

Well done Andy & Paul on your collaboration:thumbsup: It looks wonderful.

Best
JA

[Andy01]

Cheers JA on behalf of both of us for your nice feedback! :)

[Placidus]

Super-well done Andy and Paul. Lots of magnificent super-bubbles there.


We can see it's a space jockey, but it's also a (Shroedinger's?) cat with a superman cape, riding a motorcycle.

[Placidus]

Been hunting around. Your image is just about unique. A wonderful choice of target, and a very fine rendition.

[Andy01]

Thanks very much M&T, Yes I see the cat now too!
The LMC is a basket of treasures for us amateur imagers, I think this my 15th visit here and very possibly my 11th different target.
Very grateful to have Paul’s contribution & involvement, those pretty RGB stars really make it pop! :)

[Ant0nio]

An excellent image of this obscure object Andy, congrats on a successful collaboration :thumbsup:.
Tony

[Andy01]

Cheers Tony, the less trodden path occasionally throws up rich rewards :)

[strongmanmike]

Ah the LMC is certainly full of many Rorschach tests, huh?.. :lol:

Lovely looking snap there Andy and Blue, yeah love the edge on spiral top right too :thumbsup:

Mike

[Andy01]

Cheers Mike - Imaging the LMC never gets old - so much fun to be had there! :D

[markas]

Great image, Andy and Paul! I 'd love to see this one as a giant print -so much to take in.


Mark

[Bart]

Very lovely Andy. Like the H.R.Giger reference also.

[matlud]

Well done Andy and Paul -a really great image! 👍 Some really interesting structures in the field, nice to see them getting some attention 👏

[Andy01]

Cheer Mark, a print could be a worthwhile endeavour, but this is but one of the many fab and unique nebs in the LMC, hard to pick a favourite! :)



Cheers Bart, truthfully Alien scared the cr#p out of me when I first saw it, couldn’t sleep for three nights! Giger’s concept & designs are incredible. There’s a bar in Switzerland whose decor is totally inspired by him, very cool! :D



Well thanks Matthew. To be perfectly honest your Recent NB LMC image is an amazing resource for finding cool new targets! :lol:

[gregbradley]

That is an awesome image Andy. Love the stars, so small and colourful.

Nice subtle processing.

Greg.

[Andy01]

Cheers Greg - Was an interesting exercise to compare the RGB from Paul's dark site and the one's from my Melbourne Backyard.

With a heap of tweaking I can get a half reasonable result, but what Paul gets from his conditions is just soooo much nicer.

Dark skies really are wonderful! :D