Large Magellanic Cloud charts

Paddy (Patrick) · #1 01-01-2011, 01:24 PM

Well, after much labour, the charts of the LMC at cloudsofmagellan.net.au are now complete and ready for use.

There are 19 charts including an inset for the Tarantula nebula region and about 4 charts that have duplicate unlabeled versions as the objects are so dense that I thought 2 versions might help navigation.

The charts cover about 470 deep sky objects and my trials of them so far have gone well. The SMC charts have about 107. The fonts have been chosen to show up best on the PDF versions of the charts as these are the easiest to print off and use at the scope. I will gradually change the fonts that appear on the actual web pages. It's a bit of a challenge to make the fonts big enough to read easily and not to cover the patterns that are needed to navigate.

My next effort is to set up an image gallery and post observation notes which will have links back to the charts (thanks for the suggestion, Richard) as well as DDS images. I will also gradually make the labels on the web pages menus to link to reports, web links, images etc. But it will take some time. I will also be setting up pages to include other people's observation reports. As yet it is beyond my web design skills to set up a forum for people to post their own, but if you have a report on either LMC or SMC that you'd like to post, please email it to me at patrick@cloudsofmagellan.net.au . Similarly with images and sketches.

So please browse the site, print off some charts and let me know how you get on. Even if you use a go-to scope or Argo Navis, you may find the charts helpful to be sure about what you're observing as they are so tightly packed.

Thanks for having a look and all feedback would be much appreciated. If you have some suggestions, I will do my best to use them within the limitations of my novice web design skills.

Rob_K · #2 01-01-2011, 02:03 PM

Superb job Patrick, congratulations!

Should be a great resource. I may have a few things to email you.

Cheers -

ngcles · #3 01-01-2011, 02:51 PM

Hi Paddy,

Congratulations and well done from me too -- really, you have created a wonderful observing aide.

I've been quiet on the SMC threads here lately only because I've been working on gathering detailed observations of about 50-odd SMC objects for a DSD article later in 2011 (whoops nearly typed "next year"). No I won't be writing about all 50 -- just the best of them but you have to make sure you see "everything" (within reason) so you can decide what's worth and what's not worth writing about.

You'll (well, readers of the magazine will) see it in either Aug/Sept or October 2011. It's been a lot of fun observing and re-observing the SMC in fine detail -- haven't done it at that level of scrutiny that for about 10 years. The clouds (the ones in our atmosphere) have been incredibly frustrating over the last 6 months with this process -- but I don't need to tell that to anyone here who lives on the east-coast!

Best,

Les D

Paddy (Patrick) · #4 01-01-2011, 09:35 PM

Thanks Rob and Les.

Rob, I'd love to get some reports etc from you. It would be great to show what's possible with a 4" scope.

Les, I look forward to reading your article, as always.

orestis · #5 02-01-2011, 07:42 AM

Congratulations Paddy

.

This will be a valuable resource for all.I'll try and see if I can put them to good use soon.

cheers Orestis

ZeroID (Brent) · #6 03-01-2011, 08:24 AM

Stunning Paddy and thanks heaps for all the hard work.
I'll have to wait till I get back to work on the 10th to print this lot out on A3. My little inkjet at home would go into conniptions if I tried to print them.

pgc hunter · #7 03-01-2011, 01:45 PM

very impressive Paddy and major thanks for doing this

470 individual objects in this one galaxy..... cop that northern hemisphere

casstony · #8 03-01-2011, 02:02 PM

Thanks Paddy - very useful - I'll see if I can hunt down some of those smaller objects.

Lismore Bloke (Paul) · #9 03-01-2011, 09:12 PM

Hi Patrick,

Those excellent charts will be invaluable for object identification, even for those of us with systems like the Argo. The web site is great. I'll send you a list of web links, hopefully some will provide some useful information for the site.

Cheers, Paul.

Paddy (Patrick) · #10 03-01-2011, 09:37 PM

Thanks everyone. Links would be great Paul.

barx1963 (Malcolm) · #11 05-01-2011, 04:10 PM

Paddy
Great charts. I have printed them out and just finished laminating them, hope to use in the near future. I never got to give you any feedback on the SMC charts you gave me at Snake Valley, should be able to give you some with these. Thanks again

Malcolm