The Antares Rho Ophiuchus Region, the Blue Horsehead Nebula and the surrounding dust (Shikhar Gupta)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Ophiuchus (Oph) · Contains: 10 Sco) · 14 Sco) · 20 Sco) · 21 Sco) · 23 Sco) · 7 Oph · 8 Oph · 8 Sco A) · 9 Oph · 9 Sco) · Akrab (β1 Sco · Al Niyat (σ Sco · Al Niyat (τ Sco · Alniyat I · Cor Scorpii · Graffias · IC 4592 · IC 4601 · IC 4603 · IC 4604 · IC 4605 · Kalb al Akrab (α Sco · M 4 · NGC 6121 · Part of the constellation Scorpius (Sco) · The star Acrab · The star Alniyat · The star Alniyat II · The star Antares · The star Jabbah (ν Sco · And 7 more.

The Antares Rho Ophiuchus Region, the Blue Horsehead Nebula and the surrounding dust, Shikhar Gupta

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The Antares Rho Ophiuchus Region, the Blue Horsehead Nebula and the surrounding dust

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The Antares Rho Ophiuchus Region, the Blue Horsehead Nebula and the surrounding dust

Shot across 11 sessions with 3 of those being shot in February/March 2021, this was a target that has been done a lot of times, so doing it differently meant doing things that are commonly not done with the target. Since this is a relatively bright target, people hardly choose to shoot it from dark skies or with relatively longer integration times and that made all the difference for me. The region is laden with faint dust and it did take a good deal of processing time to extract them in a clean manner.
This data was shot in the cold high desert of Spiti, which have the most pristine Bortle 1 skies and since the south-south western-western horizon was blocked by high mountains, each session was no longer than 90-120mins as the target was low in the sky. I wanted at least 12-14 hours on this target to enhance the emission nebulae, but then low clouds and haze had different plans altogether, and I settled with around 10 hours of data, and using the best 9.25 hours of data from it.

Unmodified DSLR Deep Sky
Samyang 135 f/2
Low-Cost Astrophotography

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The Antares Rho Ophiuchus Region, the Blue Horsehead Nebula and the surrounding dust

The Antares Rho Ophiuchus Region, the Blue Horsehead Nebula and the surrounding dust

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The Antares Rho Ophiuchus Region, the Blue Horsehead Nebula and the surrounding dust

The Antares Rho Ophiuchus Region, the Blue Horsehead Nebula and the surrounding dust

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