SMC & Tucanae

[moondog]

Still battling to try and process some of the NZ shots.

Here's one showing the Large Megallanic Cloud towards the top and the Small Megallanic Cloud to the bottom. The bright star like object just under the SMC is the globular cluster 47 Tucanae ( NGC 104 ).

12 subs @ 20 secs 800 ISO. Canon 350D (on camera tripod) 18mm lens @ F3.5.

The image had a bad light gradient at the bottom that I had to try to minimise.

Click to enlarge

MD

[geppetto]

Stunning!

How cool is that

[SteelRat]

Very cool 8)

[lunator]

MD

Excellent.

I will get to see these myself one day.

Cheers

Ian

[Andrew*]

ohhhhh you were in new zealand!!

We're all really jealous. Wonderful shots.

Andrew

[The Warthog]

I have relatives in NZ, at this very moment, and I couldn't go. I do hope to see these things someday. You know, for all I've heard about them, I have never seen pictures of them, that I can recall, and yours are excellent!

[Ant]

To give you an idea of scale in this shot, the distance between LMC and SMC is 20 degree's. It's another 18 degrees from the LMC to the cluster top leftish. Thats a huge amount of sky!

The LMC fills completely the large circle on a telrad (4 degrees) - and goes a fiar way to filling a 7 degree circle.

Amazing shots MD. You are a lucky man indeed to have seen these items.

Ant

[moondog]

Thanks Ant - I hadn't got round to replying to WH.

I'd reckoned that the Canon 18mm lens gave about 40 degrees of sky. As you say that's some area !

Very wide angle shots, such as this, always give their own problems such as light gradients - as below!

Click to enlarge

I'm amazed at the images the Canon produced, considering this is just on a camera tripod and not a driven mount. I didn't have much time for astro imaging hence the small number of stacked images.

Think what the images would have been like on a driven mount with longer exposures - and someone with more experience of processing.

MD

[Andrew]

Thanks for sharing - it's a real treat to see objects from the SH

[Kain]

Thats ace mate!

Shame we don't have more SH members here.

Did you manage to see McNought?

Kain

[moondog]

Kain

Glad you liked the image. I deliberately tried for Tucanae because it was your suggestion !

For the first few days I had to get to bed early - like 7 to 8pm! - due to jetlag. Then by the time I could stay awake long enough to try and find the comet it had gone. Shame

MD