THE RHO OPHIUCHI CLOUD COMPLEX
- Rho Oph Nebula, Antares Nebula, M4
- Deepsky 500mm LRGB 6-panel mosaic
- 3 Crops from the mosaic
- Constellation Scorpius/Ophiuchus

With this beautiful nebula complex I already did my hours. I collected about 50 hours of exposure time in 6 panels, but with my location out of the city and at just 15° above the horizon a hopeless undertaking. Too bad about the time, I put the project on ice.
So the new premium imageset from iTelescope came in handy! A 6 panel mosaic, taken under the dark sky of Chile :-)
Working it out was a real pleasure . but the mosaic creation with Pixinsight almost drove me crazy, and I downloaded the trial version of Astro Pixel Processor, so the mosaic was created perfectly in less than 10 minutes :-) Before that I sat half the night in Pixnsight - must have 5 grey hairs more now ^^
As much as I love Pixinsight, but for mosaics with more than 2 panels I'll use the APP in the future ;-)

The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is a large interstellar dust and gas cloud in the constellation Ophiuchus (Serpent Bearer) in the sky. It is located relatively close to Earth, about 460 light-years away.
The cloud is known for its impressive variety of cosmic phenomena, including an active star-forming region, young stars, reflection nebulae, protostars, Bok globules, and dark clouds. It formed about a million years ago from the collapse of interstellar matter clouds and is an active region of star formation.
In the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex there are many young stars surrounded by the dense concentrations of dust and gas in the vicinity. These young stars radiate strongly in the infrared and are often surrounded by disks of gas and dust in which planets may form.
The cloud complex is also known for its characteristic bluish reflection nebulae, formed by the scattering of light from young stars by the dust particles. Well-known objects in this complex include the main star Antares, which is a red supergiant star, and the young star system Rho Ophiuchi, which gave the complex its name.







Telescope: Takahashi Epsilon 180ED, f/2.8, 500mm Hyperbolic Astrograph
Camera: ZWO-ASI2600MM, Astrodon E-Series Luminance (Clear)/Red/Green/Blue
Lights: each panel approx. 20xLuminance/7xRed/7xGreen/7xBlue each 180s Bin1x1
Location: Chile (iTelescope T71)
Premium Imageset, taken by iTelescope, Image Processing - Thomas ArtOfPix Großschmidt

Image Processing:
Mainly Pixinsight, Photoshop, Lightroom, GraXpert, BTX Blur Terminator, Noise Terminator, Star X Terminator.