Rho Ophiuchus

© Greg Gibbs. You may not use, replicate, manipulate, or modify this image without my permission. All Rights Reserved.

Been wanting to image this beautiful section of sky for a while now. Managed to do a bit of time on it this morning between the moon setting and the sun coming up.

This is the Rho Ophiuchus complex in the constellations of Scorpius and Ophiuchus. The faint red nebulosity on the right hand side of this image is an emission nebula (RCW129). The orange/yellow cloud is a dark nebula (IC4606). The colour comes from the light from the star Antares shining through it. Antares is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Above and slightly to the left of Antares is The Cats Eye Cluster (M4). The faint red nebulosity to the left of M4 is Sh2-9 and Ced130. The three blue/green nebulas below that surrounding the dark brown nebula (B42) are from left to right IC 5604, IC 4603 and IC 4605.

I will certainly be revisiting this section of sky soon to put some proper time into imaging it to remove some more of the noise in this image. This is just a quicky.

6/03/2012
4am
Canon 1000D
Tamron 90mm Macro F/2.8 Lens
NEQ6 Pro Goto Telescope Mount (unguided)
Aperture F/4
ISO 800
Exposures 20 x 2 minutes (40 minutes total)
Dark Frames 10 x 2 minutes
Images stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
Final Processing in PS CS3