The Large Magellanic Cloud

The Large Magellanic Cloud contains an enormous number of interesting objects for the telescope. Several hundred NGC objects are situated within the galaxy, and there is sufficient to keep any observer occupied for many hours. One night I decided to see how many I could find with a 6" telescope. After observing the the entire night, I had still only covered about a quarter of the galaxy, having logged nearly 200 objects.

Without a doubt, the jewel of the LMC is the Tarantula nebula, NGC 2070. This huge emission nebula is one of the largest in the universe and is easily visible to the naked eye even though it is about 160,000 light years away. However there are untold other emission nebulae visible even in a small telescope along with numerous open clusters and a number of globular clusters.

NGC 458	NGC 1763	NGC 1777	NGC 1801	NGC 1866
NGC 1923	NGC 1929	NGC 2000	NGC 2070 Film Images	NGC 2070 CCD Images