Heart of the Scorpion - Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex (Michael Southam)

Heart of the Scorpion - Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

Krzysztof Kieślowski has his 3 colors epic and this image is mine. The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex was the main target and focus of my May trip to Cherry Springs. My plan for each night revolved around ensuring I had enough time for a good imaging run.

Firstly I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Ivaylo Stoynov who I consider the co-author of this image. Without Ivo's awesome APT platform, I could not have hoped to match the 4 frames in the field in time and with the correct amount of overlap. Without APT I expect each reframe would have taken at least an hour to match after which time there wouldn't be any time left for imaging. As it turned out, each slew was done completely hands free with the help of APT's auto plate solving and imaging plans I had written a month in advance. Thanks Ivo.

The target deserves more attention than 1 night however I just wasn't willing to devote multiple nights of the all too short trip, to 1 image. The fact that I show 3 hours and 16 minutes of data is somewhat mis-leading. Each of the 4 plates that make up the entire image is made up of between 45 and 54 x 1 minute subs so each pixel is really the accumulation of less than 1 hour of data. That said I'm really pleased with the result. The hardest part of the processing workflow was matching the 4 images which I have never done before so had to learn from scratch. I ended up processing the image from start to finish twice. The first time I followed a mosaic video tutorial with some success but failed to see one section with double stars until I was finished. I then found another newly posted tutorial by 'DSO Imager' which worked perfectly.

Original
Final
B

ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO
Skywatcher Esprit ED Super APO Triplet
Imaged with APT
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4699994
PixInsight job	YGU05CVHTTXG3IUZHHZ93B8U1IKNFRA5
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	16h25m48s.20
RA (top/left)	16h20m30s.97
RA (top/right)	16h19m40s.59
RA (bottom/right)	16h31m20s.10
RA (bottom/left)	16h31m45s.75

Dec (center)	-25°02′37″.8
Dec (top/left)	-22°52′31″.9
Dec (top/right)	-27°07′20″.8
Dec (bottom/right)	-27°12′10″.8
Dec (bottom/left)	-22°57′26″.4

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