I highly recommend looking at this image on astrobin on full screen on a computer: https://app.astrobin.com/i/7thh0y

Both versions were stacked using my Siril stacking script: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9pdjjek5WE

If you hover over, it’ll show a narrowband overlay. And when you click and open in full screen, you can zoom to 1x resolution to see the breadth of the large magellanic cloud taken from an observatory in South Africa.

I gave two talks at NEAIC where this image was the centerpiece so people who attended got a first look at it. This was taken from an observatory telescope we’re renting (with two of my friends) in South Africa. it’s a 12 panel mosaic, the full resolution is about 260 megapixels but this is cropped down to about 160 megapixels, mostly due to an error during cropping when I was processing.

The stacked file was more than 3gb in size.

Equipment:

• – Telescope: Askar SQA85
• – Camera: QHYCCD QHY268 Pro C
• – Mount: Proxisky UMi 20S
• – Filters: Antlia ALP-T Dual Band 5nm 2″, QHYCCD UV/IR CUT
• – Software: Adobe Photoshop, Astro Pixel Processor (APP), PixInsight, Siril
• – Total integration: 71h 10m

I’m renting this rig with two of my friends, Dave and Chris, at the Kagga Kamma Remote Observatory. Watch my short video about our experience so far here: