Henize 70 in LMC

Massive stars profoundly affect their galactic environments. Churning and mixing interstellar clouds of gas and dust, stars -- most notably those upwards of tens of times the mass of our Sun -- leave their mark on the compositions and locations of future generations of stars. Dramatic evidence of this is illustrated in our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), by the featured nebula, Henize 70 (also known as N70 and DEM301). Henize 70 is actually a luminous superbubble of interstellar gas about 300 light-years in diameter, blown by winds from hot, massive stars and supernova explosions, with its interior filled with tenuous hot and expanding gas. Because superbubbles can expand through an entire galaxy, they offer humanity a chance to explore the connection between the lifecycles of stars and the evolution of galaxies.

An Amazing Explorer’s Legacy – the Henize Objects.  In a recent project my astrophotography group, using a 24” Planewave telescope high in the Andes in Chile, targeted the object known as Henize 70.  The image below is the result of this effort.  From this I became curious about the history of the Henize objects.  The astronomer Karl Henize spent years studying the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the dwarf galaxy nearest us visible only from the southern hemisphere.  He created a catalog of interesting objects in it during his career as Professor of Astronomy at Northwestern University.  In 1967 he gave up his full professorship to became an Apollo astronaut and was actually slated to fly on Apollo 20 or 21 had the NASA project not been discontinued.  In 1985 he finally did go into space on the Space Shuttle Challenger with the SpaceLab2 experiment.  Henize had a lifelong interest in the LMC and created the catalog of interesting objects now bearing his name. Exploration was his game, and ultimately how he went out – at age 70 in 1994 he died climbing Mount Everest, where his body was buried at 22,000 ft.

Recent Image:
Imaged in HOO RGB on our Planewave CDK 700 at Observatorio El Sauce, Chile.
Image Processing: Mike Selby and Mark Hanson.

Older Image

Taken from SWOS in El Sauce, Chile 24” PlaneWave CDK (LRGBHA) Image Processing Mark Hanson