Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scorpius (Sco)  ·  Contains:  12 c01 Sco  ·  12.61  ·  13 c02 Sco  ·  20 sig Sco  ·  21 alf Sco  ·  22 i Sco  ·  23 tau Sco  ·  25 Sco  ·  674 Rachele  ·  Alniyat  ·  Antares  ·  B229  ·  B44  ·  IC 4591  ·  IC 4603  ·  IC 4605  ·  LBN 1096  ·  LBN 1100  ·  LBN 1101  ·  LBN 1102  ·  LBN 1103  ·  LBN 1104  ·  LBN 1105  ·  LBN 1106  ·  LBN 1107  ·  LBN 1108  ·  LBN 1109  ·  LBN 1110  ·  LDN 1672  ·  LDN 1673  ·  And 137 more.
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Rho Ophiuchi Complex #8, Molly Wakeling
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Rho Ophiuchi Complex #8

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Rho Ophiuchi Complex #8, Molly Wakeling
Powered byPixInsight

Rho Ophiuchi Complex #8

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One more from my dark-sky weekend -- the Rho Ophiuchi Complex! This one really needs dark skies and a good camera lens to capture well. I was a bit off-center with the aim, but it came out gorgeous anyway!

There's a bunch of neat stuff in this area. The bright yellow star is Antares, which is just west of the Milky Way. The yellow glow surrounding it is reflection nebula -- gas reflecting the star's yellow light. Antares is an enormous star -- a red supergiant even larger than Betegeuse, with a total luminosity (including in infrared, where it glows most strongly) is 65,000 times brighter than the Sun. The radius of the star is 3.4 AU (astronomical units), which would extend out to between Mars and Jupiter in our own solar system! To Antares' right is globular cluster M4, which lies about 7,200 ly away (compared to Antares' 550 ly) and is 75 ly across. The double star up near the top inside of the blue-gray nebula is Rho Ophiuchi, the star of the constellation Ophiuchus for which the whole area is named. Two large tendrils of light-absorbing molecular dust point toward the core of the Milky Way.

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Rho Ophiuchi Complex #8, Molly Wakeling