The Crux, or Southern Cross as it is more generally known, is definitely a southern gem and has pride of place for us southern observers and imagers. It is prominently displayed on the Australian flag and is (almost) circumpolar at my latitude (33.5d south). The reason for not being quite 100% circumpolar is that the star Gamma Crucis (Gacrux) dips below the horizon for about two hours for each rotation around the pole.

The combination of the ASI6200 full frame CMOS camera and Canon EF200mm prime lens works very well for this image as it captures the entire constellation of Crux in the one field. At an image scale of around 4" it provides for a reasonably detailed resolution for this wide field vista. As well as displaying the beauty of Crux and the lovely colours of the main stars, a key objective was to be able to capture the Ha emissions in this region. The constellation is surrounded by a large HII region which is not often captured in images of this area. With a total of 11.5 hours of Ha data captured using the Astronomik 6nm filter, it has been possible show just how much HII gas permeates the area. To demonstrate this further, a mouse over has been applied showing the RGB image below without the Ha integration. This is a quite informative display.

As a visual observer I have from time to time been drawn to viewing carbon stars which appear quite red in the eyepiece. One of the very prominent examples of a carbon star is one that is very close to Beta Crucis and is quite easy to find in a medium field eyepiece. It was very pleasing to see that this carbon star is easily spotted in the image behind the blue glare of Beta Crucis. There are a number of nice globular clusters in the image as well including the well known Jewel Box Cluster (NGC 4755). See image revision D for annotations contain a number of star and deep sky object designations.

Because of the large file sizes that are produced by the ASI6200 full frame camera, the processed file has been reduced to 50% of the original resolution for the purpose of posting the image on this forum.