Small Magellanic Cloud (NGC 202)

clic for 70% size 1820 x 1638 (838 kB)


About this Image

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a small galaxy of irregular type. It may be a distorted barred disk, deformed by the tidal gravitational forces of Milky Way and LMC, but this is not sure. It contains several nebulae and star clusters which can be seen in this image.
On top left side there is the bright globular cluster 47 Tucanae and below on the left the small Globular NGC 121. The above image resolves countless stars of our 3rd closest neighbor galaxy.
North is right.


Technical Details
Optics

Canon EF 200mm f/2.8 L fully open

Mount AP-400 GEM
Camera SBIG STL-11000M at -20C, internal filter wheel
Filters LRGB
Date Aug 14, 2004.
Location Hakos/Namibia
Sky Conditions mag 6.5, high transparency, temperature 10 C,
Exposure LRGB= 10:10:10:15 min (5-minute sub-exposures)
all 1x1.
Processing Image aquisition in Maxim DL 4.0; Image calibration, aligning, mean stacking, DDP and color synthesis in ImagesPlus;
Photoshop: curves, color balance, unsharp mask, cropped;