Our neighbouring galaxies

[Barry]

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a nearby irregular galaxy, and is a satellite of the Milky Way. At a distance of slightly less than 50 kiloparsecs (≈160,000 light-years), the LMC is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way. It has a mass equivalent to approximately 10 billion times the mass of our Sun (1010 solar masses), making it roughly 1/100 as massive as the Milky Way, and a diameter of about 14,000 light-years.

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy with a diameter of about 7,000 light-years and contains several hundred million stars. It has a total mass of approximately 7 billion times the mass of our Sun.
At a distance of about 200,000 light-years, it is one of the Milky Way's nearest neighbors. It is also one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye.

Each image is a stack of around 8 subframes of five minutes each. Taken with a 5DMK II and 70-200 f/4L at 70mm. Star tracking was done with the camera mounted to my EQ6 pro telescope mount.

[LJG]

Wow. It still amazes me how you photograph these Barry. It really is a wonderous sight that does make you queston, are we really alone? When you look at them does that question ever pop into your mind? I know it used to in Ken Beames' mind, he spoke of it quite often when we visited his observatory when we were kids.

[Barry]

Wow. It still amazes me how you photograph these Barry. It really is a wonderous sight that does make you queston, are we really alone? When you look at them does that question ever pop into your mind? I know it used to in Ken Beames' mind, he spoke of it quite often when we visited his observatory when we were kids.

It is very often in my thoughts mate. My faith answers a lot of questions for me though. I am very clear on the matter, but that's not a conversation for photography forums.

Baz.