Sitting in the dark, with nothing but silence and stars around me, and looking at the impact zone where two supergiant shells are colliding in another galaxy, never fails to be a stupefying experience, no matter how many times I observe it. The LMC really is a glorious galaxy! Surprisingly, one gets the best grasp of the two supergiant shells and their impact zone by looking at it under ideal observing skies through a pair of 10×50 binoculars. LMC 4’s massive and dark cavern is beautifully obvious, and LMC 5 is visible not as a cavern, but as a narrow darkness on the other side of lush N48, which is clearly visible as a small, misty, elongated shard of light. I find this view gives me the best appreciation of the sheer immensity and power of these titanic supergiant shells. After all, I use my binos during the day to look at a little bird over there in a tree… yet here I am able to see two SGSs colliding 163,000 light-years away! Taking this sense of scale to the telescope for a close-up view certainly enhances the observation.

228x: The extraordinary starfield NGC 1948 is a large cloud of the young LH 52’s stars, with the equally young LH 53’s stars streaming from the northeastern end. The richest section appears as an unusual rhombus shape, ~8′ x 3′ in size and oriented SW-NE. Well over three dozen stars are resolved, set against a rich haze of unresolved stars and patchy, misty nebulosity. There is a further scattering of stars to the rhombus’ west, set against a considerably fainter glow of unresolved stars and no nebulosity. Most noticeable are two parallel chains of stars that lie roughly 3′ apart and run NE-SW through the rhombus. The westernmost of these two chains is the brighter of the two and contains a number of mag 12-14 stars and a richer glow of unresolved stars and haze. It is impossible to tell where LH 52’s stars stop and LH 53’s start! But LH 53’s stars stream out of the rich cloud of stars in a broken chain of at least a dozen bright, faint and unresolved stars that flow towards, but don’t reach, the stunning little SNR N49. 

Unfiltered, the nebulosity appears as a fairly bright, irregular mistiness that encompasses the stars. It has a tremendous responds to the UHC filter, revealing itself as a bright, patchy nebulosity with soft edges that fade away into the surrounding sky. Towards the centre, N48A and C both appear as brighter but exceedingly small, fuzzy patches. N48B appears as a relatively bright, roundish nebulous knot, ~1.2′ in diameter, with fuzzy edges.