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N51D is an emission nebula located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is also known as NGC 1968. An open cluster, NGC 1955, is located in its interior and is responsible for both heating (emission) and lighting up (reflection) this nebula. Due to the hot, blue stars in this cluster, the strong stellar winds conform the “bowl”-like shape of the nebula. This nebula has one very peculiar feature. As many of the nebulas present in the LMC, it is a place where many new stars are born. Several YSOs (Young Stellar Objects, future stars in their initial stages) have been found in this nebula. One of them associated with the first Herbig Haro found and characterized outside our own galaxy (Chu et al. 2005, using the Spitzer telescope). This HH object is located in the lower left rim of the “bowl”, just at the upper left off the center of the image.
My son, Pau (11), helped me in the processing of this image.
Additional Information
Object
Name(s): N51D, NGC 1968
Type: Emission Nebula
RA: 05h 27m 22s
Dec: -67º 27’ 07”
Constellation: Doradus
Size (arcmin): 20×20
Magnitude: +9.0
Distance: 170,000 ly
Image
Date: 2016-11-06 thru 2016-11-09
Location: iTelescope.net, SSO near Coonabarabran, NSW Australia
Size (arcmin): 36×36
Telescope: Planewave CDK 20” f/6.8
Camera: SBIG STX16803 (4096x4096pix)
Guiding: Astrodon MonsterMOAG off-axis guider
Total exposure: 13 hours (Ha: 5.5 hs; OIII: 6 hs; RGB: 1.5 hs, only stars)
Processing: CCDStack, Photoshop CC 2017