Attention all lovers of the Magellanic Clouds. I would like to present a new, all in one extended object chart of the Small Magellanic Cloud for free use to all those interested. The chart is a large Jpeg file and also available is an excel spreadsheet listing all of the individual objects and their most common names and coordinates. The chart was originally started about 12 years ago as a result of what I outline below.
To access the chart and catalogue visit the website of the Horowhenua Astronomical Society;
In late 1999 I was invited to be a contributing author in an astronomical handbook called, “The Night Sky Observer’s Guide Vol III, The Southern Sky,” by the lead author, American George Robert Kepple. A list of non-stellar objects of just 600 individual members that came mainly from the N.G.C. & I.C. catalogues was sent to me to observe with my 18 inch Dobsonian reflector. The 600 proved to be an insufficient list to represent the section of sky that I was asked to examine which runs from my zenith (declination 40 south) to the S.C.P. (South Celestial Pole). From memory I think I observed about 600 objects in the Large Magellanic Cloud alone.
Over the several years it took to review this large chunk of sky I tried to inspect almost everything that my telescope could pick up from my rural location on the Manawatu Plains, New Zealand. I had intended to use smaller telescopes to inspect many of the brighter objects and add impressions from those ‘scopes as well. The task proved too great for one observer and fortunately renowned deep-sky observer Jenni Kay from Adelaide, South Australia, agreed to come onboard and add her considerable skills and efforts to the project.
Even 13 years ago there were considerable resources available to deep sky observers wanting to rummage through the Milky Way and the extra-galactic regions of the southern sky. Numerous atlases and some of the early computer software available were first rate and allied with some internet sources still available today, the process of finding and confirming individual objects was fairly easy. By the way I don’t operate a ‘Go To’ telescope. I am a star hopper from way back so good charts are necessary!
When it came to the Magellanic Clouds however the usual sources were very limited. When an observer runs their telescope through our two little inter-galactic neighbours it isn’t hard to see why. Both Clouds are crammed full of clusters and nebulae. The sight can be quite daunting even to an experienced observer.
The only resources that I had available that came close to making sense of all of this were charts printed from a friend’s Megastar Version 4 software and the Herald-Bobroff Star Atlas. The H-B Star Atlas proved very accurate in the L.M.C. One had to get used to the nebulae all being depicted as squares of varying sizes and intensities. Although tricky it was workable once you got used to it.
Unfortunately the same could not be said for the S.M.C. Both the H-B Atlas and Megastar 4 were full of mistakes. Many objects were either misplaced which created confusion, or as was the case with Megastar clusters were shown as stars. Obviously this came about in the process of creating their charts from photographs and perhaps some use of automated procedures which may not have recognized the smaller clusters for what they really were.
To overcome some of these problems I created a mosaic of photographic images of fields downloaded from the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS). I then mosaiced another chart of fields from Megastar 4 that covered an A1 sheet. Between the two I made up a working chart that made it possible to finish my observations in the S.M.C. I left it like that for about ten years before deciding to take it a lot further. The catalyst for this was the arrival of the MCELS (Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey) mosaic image of the S.M.C. that came out in 2006, along with an equally brilliant image of the L.M.C. to be found at this web site.
My first step was to reduce my original hand drawn chart to an A3 size so that I could scan it. Only having a basic drawing programme, Microsoft Paint, I set about tidying up the chart and colour coding the objects. I also realized that this was an opportunity to take the chart to a more comprehensive level, one that would be useful to astrophotographers as well. This is where the MCELS image proved invaluable as well. In association with that image I had a hard copy of the Extended Object List of the S.M.C. I used the latter list to create the accompanying catalogue for the objects shown on the chart.
As I worked my way through the upgrade on version 2 I found many mistakes that I was able to correct. Just when I thought I had it nailed I found more resources that added more objects to the chart and highlighted more mistakes to fix. That was mid 2012. I decided to put the chart aside and come back to it when I had more time.
The Christmas holidays of 2012 have given me that extra time to re-visit this project. Once again whilst looking for something else on the net I came up with more great resources in the form of the Revised and Extended Catalogue of the S.M.C. and accompanying charts provided by the American Astronomical Society and the NASA Astrophysics Data System.
Things to note on the chart; I have avoided the use of grid lines as I feel that the chart is very full of information as it is. As I have found throughout people may find that stars shown on this chart do not exist in reality. I have removed such cases where I have found them but I have not put a great deal of effort into seeking them out. Some may notice that there are several open red circles that have no label to them. These are purely photographic and as yet I have not found a catalogue that lists them so they are there as a reminder to astrophotographers of their presence.
You will notice on the version 1 attached that I used a DSS field at the bottom of the chart to help sort out the field of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (if you turn the image so that east is at the top then you find that the strongest seven nebulae in the field form the number ‘7’). I also made an attempt at an index chart for the nebula complex around NGC 456 etc. For the latest version of the chart Stephen Chadwick of Himatangi Beach near me has kindly provided these fine colour images of both of those crowded fields as well as a brilliant image of the lucida of the S.M.C., NGC 346, the Barred Spiral Nebula.
The image provided is a big file made that way so that it can be printed on a big format. My local stationary shop produced an A1 sized colour image on plain paper for $6.50 N.Z. for a similar price or a bit more I can have it laminated so that it can be placed on the wall of our observatory. Printing this chart at anything smaller than A3 would require a magnifying glass to read it!
This is a living entity in that if anyone finds a mistake I will correct it and advise anyone accordingly. I put this out now knowing that it is possibly not 100 % correct but that it is as close as I can make it by self checking. If anyone has the resources and inclination to check it thoroughly then feel free to do so.
I would like to thank Alan Gilmore of Mount John University Observatory at Tekapo for his assistance in this work.
Now I know that there is one question all of you Magellanic Cloud lovers want to ask. What about the L.M.C.? As I mentioned earlier I did find the Herald-Bobroff Atlas very good to use for the L.M.C. but it is not an overly easy set of charts to use. In the meantime I did go through and annotate Robert Gendler’s fine image of the Large Cloud, but unfortunately that is not my image to share with you. Suffice it to say that if I give the L.M.C. a go you won’t have to wait another dozen years to see the results.
Ian Cooper
(President of the Palmerston North Astronomical Society)
(Vice President of the Horowhenua Astronomical Society)
(Vice President of the Phoenix Astronomical Society)
All based in the Lower North Island of New Zealand.
This is an amazing and impressive piece of work Ian - very comprehensive and thoroughly researched. There are a plethora of objects to observe on your chart. I will be printing one off to find all the things that I've missed.
for some reason I don't seem to have found anything more than a one page reference to Matti's work when I started this project. I still haven't seen a complete one of Matti's charts yet. The link that you posted through this site comes up blank BTW so any other source that you can offer will be much appreciated.
Paddy, I hope that you find this useful. Remember that being a Jpeg file you can crop & save to any field size and take them out to the telescope as you need rather than dealing with the whole chart each time.
Great work Ian, I cannot seem to download the chart,
Nothing happens,just says working then nothing
Are you saying you can get the charts printed and laminated,?
How big is A1, I have never seen an A1 sized picture as far as I know
I too have Matti Morel's charts.
Cheers
thanks for those links. Excellent stuff. The one with the review of Matti's atlas is all I have seen of his work to date. I would intersted in anything you can pass on to me.
Ron,
I tried it too with the same result. I sent a message to our web master Mike. After that I tried right clicking on the thumbnail and hit 'save as' which does the trick.
A1 measures 83cm x 60cm. As I said though you can crop and save smaller areas of the chart to suit your telescope and print at A4 if you like. It's free to use and do with as you please!
Cheers
Ian
p.s. don't forget to download the MCELS image that covers most of the chart as well.
I got a response back from our man Mike. Because of the large file size he had to load it through his own Dropbox account. It has been going well until now. Mike has a couple of family issues to sort out before he can get back onto it. Thanks for alerting us to the problem.
I got a response back from our man Mike. Because of the large file size he had to load it through his own Dropbox account. It has been going well until now. Mike has a couple of family issues to sort out before he can get back onto it. Thanks for alerting us to the problem.
Mike White, our web master, got back to me with this fix.
Hi Ian,
I've moved the image to our Google Docs drive and changed the link on the website image to point to that. Unfortunately it means there is no "preview" offered (Google Docs limitation), but they can immediately download the full-size image and save or print it.
First-class job, Ian. A very useable chart for sure
Matti Morel is still about and lives within 45 minutes of me - I tracked him down recently with some questions and managed to get a hold of his visual atlases for both the LMC and SMC. Lucky me!
Firstly thanks to all of you who have responded and taken the time to go over the chart and table. I had just updated the chart and table thanks to an extra image sent to me by my good mate Stephen Chadwick. The photo was of another very busy area around NGC 371. I took this opportunity to re-arrange the whole look of the chart and add in in Steve's new photo. Version 5 can be found at the Horowhenua Astronomical Society web site,
I hope you will all find that this is a bit of an improvement and the new close up fits in well. Don't download these just yet as I will send the amended V.5 of today through to our man Mike to load on tomorrow. This will be complete with the amendments courtesy of SteveG.
Well spotted Steve. I had NGC 299 down as K 30 which was shown as a star, another legacy of Megastar 4. You also accidentally discovered how I loaded all of the coordinates on in Excel. I have amended NGC 346 accordingly.
It is great to have more sets of eyes looking at this than just mine.
Bert, they are a couple of great photos that you posted. Yes they will be very useful. That second one of the LMC is very scary to contemplate. There is no other piece of sky like it.
Further to my post yesterday, the latest versions of both the chart and table have been loaded in. One of the new features on the chart is a date stamp down in the bottom right corner. The latest date is 2013.01.13.
Bert, they are a couple of great photos that you posted. Yes they will be very useful. That second one of the LMC is very scary to contemplate. There is no other piece of sky like it.
Cheers
Ian
Ian the original mosaics are much larger and have better detail and depth when in 16bit tiff form. In 16 bit form you can far more easily and accurately adjust the contrast and brightness etc to suit your mapping needs.
I can put up a compressed zip file or send it to you by snail mail on a DVD. The LMC mosaic is 730MB in tiff form!
You are welcome to use my images in any way you see fit for your mapping work.
My poor guess would be there are extended objects in this image that do not have a designation yet.
My only gain would be that I know far better what I am imaging!
Here is an inverted version of the LMC in NII. 13MB
your 'poor guess' was spot on. The most obvious ones were the two faint rings or partial rings on the left (east) of the chart near NGC 796 and the clusters L 113 & 114. They must be really faint even photographically! My test for this is to download a field from the DSS and to keep manipulating the image to tease out any faint nebulosity. It can take three or so steps to do this. Those two nebulae are very faint and would be a real challenge for any amateur astro-imager for sure.
I'll try the zip form if you like or you can contact me off forum perhaps?
