Rho Ophiuchi (greenbbs)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Scorpius (Sco) · Contains: IC 4603 · IC 4604 · IC 4605 · M 4 · NGC 6121 · NGC 6144 · The star 22Sco · The star Al Niyat (σSco) · The star Antares (αSco) · The star οSco · The star ρOph · rho Oph nebula

Powered byPixInsight

Rho Ophiuchi

Powered byPixInsight

Rho Ophiuchi

So, last night, I had about an hour or so window to go out and shoot something deep sky oriented for the first time in a while. I've long wanted to do a photo of this area of the sky, and the opportunity was right, so why not!?

One of my favorite areas of the sky, Rho Ophiuchi, lives about 360 light years from Earth, in the constellation Ophiuchus, which lies between Scorpius and Sagittarius in the sky (or for those who know their way around the galaxy in the Northern Hemisphere, right next to the Milky Way's galactic core). It's the way I personally know the Milky Way is high enough to shoot in order to get some of those shots.

It's an extremely colorful area of the sky, with blues, yellows, reds, and purples, and is a very active star forming region. 2 of it's most noticeable features are Antares, which is the big yellow star at the bottom left (it's called Antares because people used to get it confused with Mars, and the Greek word for Mars was Ares....so they called it Antares so that they knew it wasn't Mars), and M4, which is the globular cluster next to it on the right.

Nerdy Details:

Sony A99 with Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 lens, shot at 135mm at f4.

ISO 800, 60 second frames x 60 frames (1 hour integration time)

Tracked on Celestron AVX mount, but no guidance (too little time with the window of cloudlessness I had to putz around with guidance)

Stacked and pre-processed in PixInsight.

Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	665377
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Rho Ophiuchi

Rho Ophiuchi

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Rho Ophiuchi

Rho Ophiuchi

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information