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Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scorpius (Sco)  ·  Contains:  14 Sco)  ·  20 Sco)  ·  21 Sco)  ·  23 Sco)  ·  46 Lib  ·  5 Sco)  ·  6 Sco)  ·  7 Sco)  ·  8 Sco A)  ·  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  ·  Iclarkrau (δ Sco  ·  Iolil (ρ Sco  ·  Kalb al Akrab (α Sco  ·  M 4  ·  NGC 6121  ·  Nur (π Sco  ·  Part of the constellation Scorpius (Sco)  ·  The star Acrab  ·  The star Alniyat  ·  And 10 more.
Rho Ophiuchi, the Blue Horsehead and Pi Scorpii, emich
Rho Ophiuchi, the Blue Horsehead and Pi Scorpii
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Rho Ophiuchi, the Blue Horsehead and Pi Scorpii

Link: https://instagram.com/emichbe
Rho Ophiuchi, the Blue Horsehead and Pi Scorpii, emich
Rho Ophiuchi, the Blue Horsehead and Pi Scorpii
Powered byPixInsight

Rho Ophiuchi, the Blue Horsehead and Pi Scorpii

Link: https://instagram.com/emichbe

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Description

It's summer and looking towards the south in the Northern Hemisphere, you will easily recognize the Scorpius constellation. Scorpius and Ophiuchus, while right next to the core of our Milky Way, have some spectacular stuff of their own going on.

Rho Ophiuchi is considered the most colorful part of our night sky, is made up of Antares, a star cluster (M4) and beautiful dust lanes pointing to the core of the Milky Way. I like the story behind Antares. Antares looks yellow/reddish to the unaided eye and was considered a rival of Mars, or Ares, by the Greek. It earned it the name Antares. Antares is pretty at the end of its life and is already shedding gasses around it, as seen in this photo. Close to Rho, you'll also find the Blue Horsehead nebula and it even has the more faint Pi Scorpii to the left!

Rho and the Blue Horsehead nebula have forever been a bucket list item since last season. I still remember how excited I felt last year when I was able to capture Rho for the first time since starting this strange hobby.

This is also the first time I take and assemble a mosaic. This isn't just one image, but two images overlapping that I combined to form a bigger image with better resolution. Both objects are pretty big in the night sky, almost too big for using any of my telescopes. This is the reason why I went with the Rokinon 135mm lens combined with my Canon EOS Ra. The total time spent on this shot is about an hour, which is a great advertisement for this lens!

Unfortunately, Rho is only visible a few months a year from these latitudes. I could have taken more exposures for even more detail, but I think this works out great and I feel like this might even be one of my best astro shots yet!

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Rho Ophiuchi, the Blue Horsehead and Pi Scorpii, emich
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