This enormous and incredibly rich star cloud inhabits an incredibly rich region.

At 130x, this gigantic star cloud is a huge oval shape, oriented NE-SW, and immensely full of stars – certainly more than a hundred are resolved. All its stars appear contained within well-defined boundaries except at the star cloud’s northeast end which appears “open” – it looks as if some of its stars are exiting the star cloud in a few small orderly queues! Very unusual!

Even more unusual is an intriguing river of mag 10-12 stars that flows along the northern edge of the star cloud in an ENE direction, and then continues to flow south of the Tarantula Nebula, heading all the way towards the extremely rich cluster NGC 2100. It really does seem like a river of stars because it is just like following a slightly less-convoluted Eridanus star-by-star … and with a very much more glitzy “star at the end of the river”!

Using the UHC filter to check the star cloud’s nebulosity shows a soft misty nebulosity on the northeast side that seeps into approximately a quarter of the star cloud. Looking towards the Tarantula, it looks as if tendrils of its nebulosity have wafted south-ish and are dissipating like smoke among the star cloud’s stars. Just gorgeous!

An absolutely exquisite star cloud. Credit: ESO

16″ at 228x: LH 93 = NGC 2050 stands out as a brighter E-W oval patch, ~3′ x 2′ in diameter, against its rich star cloud background, with close to a dozen resolved stars set against the hazy background of unresolved stars. A ~mag 10.5 star lies on its western edge and another, with a small faint “companion”, lies on the southwestern edge. The river of stars described above appears to flow right across its northern edge – one wonders which of those stars actually belong to LH 93?

16″ at 228x: The star cloud’s richness of stars makes it difficult to distinguish those of LH 94 except for the small, very bright knot of four stars in a 1′ region. The two bright “stars” in this knot are compact clusters – mag 10.5 R127 and lying a mere 20″ to its southwest, mag 10.7 mag R128. Even more fantastic is that R127 contains the brightest Luminous Blue Variable in the LMC! Compact clusters are the type of observation that calls for imagination and contemplation, and my-oh-my, what an imagination-and-contemplative eyeful that tiny R127 sparkle provides!

16″ at 228x: LH 97 appears as an oval shape, ~3’x2′ in diameter, oriented NW-SE, with around 15 or so stars resolved against the glow of unresolved stars (although some of this may well be the faint nebulosity that covers this quadrant of the star cloud). It contains a nice little mag 14.0 Wolf-Rayet star, Brey 70 and three very small clusters, two of which form a binary pair! Round KMK88 91, ~40″ in diameter, is the brightest of the three clusters. The binary pair, (separation 0.8′, PA 172°) are less bright – HS 371 is a small, faint, smudgy droplet of light and BRHT 54b is an equally small, faint, smudgy droplet of light, albeit somewhat elongated.

16″ at 228x: Lying in the centre of the star cloud, it is difficult to distinguish LH 98’s stars from the rich carpet of stars in which they lie. It contains the cluster BSDL 2583 which appears as a very small and faint smudge of stellar light.