Colorful Clouds of Rho ophiuchi
at the border of Scorpius and Ophiucus
Colorful
clouds decorate this region of the sky surrounding the bright triple
star Rho Ophiuchus. Probably this is the most colorful area visible
from Earth.
The blue
reflection nebula surrounding Rho Ophiuchus represents the visible
counterpart of a much larger but invisible molecular cloud permeating
the region and known as the Ophiuchus cloud. The area is highlighted by the bright star Antares as well, a red supergiant star, located close to the border of the image.
The central
core of this giant molecular cloud can be seen as a dense dark nebula,
where no star visible on this picture. Although if we imaged in
infrared light, we could look into the dust seeing star formation
directly, spotting many young stars there.
This is one of the nearest and most studied regions of star formation in the local Milky Way at a distance of about 520 light years.
Image details
- Instrument:
- 200/750 Newton, 3" Wynne (710mm effective focal length)
- Camera:
- Home-modified Canon EOS 5DmkII
- Mount:
- SkyWatcher EQ6 + Boxdörfer DynoStar
- Guiding:
- 9x50mm SkyWatcher finder scope (50/180mm), Lacerta-MGen autoguider
- Exposure time, filters:
- 49x5 min (4 hours 15 minutes total) @ ISO 1600
- Location, date:
- Hakos astrofarm, Namibia (1835m); 2010.05.09.
- Observing conditions:
- Transparency: 9/10, Seeing: 9/10, Temperature: +13°C
- Processing:
- ImagesPlus, Registar, Photoshop
