After my
quickie first light SMC I decided to hit the LMC properly, well with 4deg X 4deg field available, about half of it anyway
While this is presented in essentially true colour, it is in fact a HaOIIIRGB blend to specifically accentuate the ionised gases (the whole region is permeated with strands of HII and lots of OIII too).
To say I am very happy with how the mount, camera and scope performed ie. absolutely flawlessly, is an understatement (not one sub was chucked!)...it's a great feeling
After hearing about the notoriety of the FSQ and focus shift with temperature changes, I have found that the focus actually holds pretty well as far as I can tell and here is what the
guide graph looked like all three nights all night and often even better! Other than what happens when applying DDP, I used no specific processing on the stars, this is them out of the scope, I also used no noise reduction at all (just darks and dither guided) so very happy with this chip/camera. With such tiny stars across such a big field, registration is critical at this size chip, particularly when displaying at 100% full res...and critical inspection shows it is veeery close to spot on, so happy bout that
. Worth noting I have had to do no shimming or tilting or spacing adjustments, this is how I put it all together, first time, out of the boxes
With lots of weird shaped nebulae strewn all over the scene and dozens of open clusters and globular clusters to find, this image needs to be viewed at full resolution:
Tarantula region LMC
However, to appreciate the whole field at once here is
a smaller file.
For those who enjoy the B&W contrasty look of the
Halpha only
EDIT: Here is
an annotated version to identify the large number of catalogued objects (Courtesy of Sakib Rasool)
Remember, all capture details are under the image
Enjoy
Mike