Topic: Menagerie of Celestial Objects in New Image of the Large Magellanic Cloud

[sam]

Astronomers often turn their telescopes to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the closest galaxies to our own Milky Way, in their quest to understand the Universe. In this spectacular new image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, a celestial menagerie of different objects and phenomena in part of the LMC is on display, ranging from vast globular clusters to the remains left by brilliant supernovae explosions. This fascinating observation provides data for a wide variety of research projects unravelling the life and death of stars and the evolution of galaxies.

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/01/menagerie-of-celestial-objects-in-new-image-of-the-large-magellanic-cloud/


-- a really stunning image of the large magellanic cloud here.

[Clive]

I have never been far enough south to see the Magellanic Clouds.   

[sam]

same here. need to fix that.

[Clive]

Me too!     What's particularly interesting about the photo is that it's a very small patch of sky which is normally seen as just a nebulous cloud similar to the Orion nebula.  The telescope has resolved the nebula into individual stars and giant clusters of stars and brought out some of the finest detail I've ever seen. 

[sam]

that's what you get with a 2.2m telescope!

[GillE]

It looks like my new kitchen worktop .

[Clive]