Under the Galaxy


Yuri: "This is the view we witness now in September at Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory located in the Atacama desert in Chile. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) culminates just above the Las Campanas mountain—home of future GMT telescope. The orange cast on the sky the sky is not light pollution—it's airglow which was dominating the night sky. "Clear sky" filter from Optolong Filter helped me to increase the contrast on the image and partly reduce airlgow light. On the foreground (on the hill) you see panoramic view of the observatory's facility—houses where astronomers and engineers stay during their visits.
:) I hope you'll enjoy the view."

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of 50 kiloparsecs (≈163,000 light-years), the LMC is the third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal (~ 16 kpc) and the putative Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (~ 12.9 kpc, though its status as a galaxy is under dispute), lying close to the Galactic Center. The LMC has a diameter of about 14,000 light-years (4.3 kpc) based on readily visible stars and a mass of approximately 10 billion Sun masses (1010 solar masses), making it roughly 1/100 as massive as the Milky Way. Based on this, the LMC is the fourth-largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Milky Way, and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33). (Source: Wikipedia)

Credit: Yuri Beletsky
Location: Atacama Desert, Chile
Release Date: September 17, 2017

+Yuri Beletsky

Technical details: Nikon D810a

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