Rho Ophiuchi and the Blue Horsehead (Mark Forteath)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Ophiuchus (Oph) · Contains: IC 4592 · IC 4601 · IC 4603 · IC 4604 · IC 4605 · M 4 · NGC 6121 · Part of the constellation Scorpius (Sco) · The star 13Sco · The star Al Niyat (σSco) · The star Antares (αSco) · The star Graffias (β1Sco) · The star νSco · The star τSco · The star χOph · The star ω1Sco · The star ω2Sco · The star ωOph · rho Oph Nebula

Rho Ophiuchi and the Blue Horsehead, Mark Forteath

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Rho Ophiuchi and the Blue Horsehead

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Rho Ophiuchi and the Blue Horsehead

Well here is the photo I am most proud of in my 5+ years of astrophotography so far. This is the Rho Ophiuchi complex with the Blue Horsehead to the left. Imaged over the last 3 months on every clear moonless night I could get, this is a total of 1162 images over a total of 23 tiles stacked and combined. Imaged through a William Optics Star 71 II APO on a Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro mount with a Nikon D750 unmodified dslr camera.

Initially I set out to image just Rho Ophiuchi but quickly realised there was a lot more to get in the fringes to do it justice. I must thank Angie for the encouragement and understanding through the many nights I spend on this project.

The colorful clouds surrounding the star system Rho Ophiuchi compose one of the closest star forming regions. Rho Ophiuchi itself is a binary star system visible in the blue reflection nebula in the image center. The star system, located only 400 light years away, is distinguished by its multi coloured surroundings, which include a red emission nubula and numerous light and dark brown dust lanes. Near the right of the Rho Ophiuchi molecula cloud system is the yellow star Antares, while a distant but coincidentally superposed globular cluster of stars, M4, is visible just above Antares. On the image left lies IC 4592, the Blue Horsehead nebula. The blue glow that surrounds the Blue Horsehead's eye, and other stars around the image, is a reflection nebula composed of fine dust. This is an incredible piece of sky with so much going on.

The image in its full resolution is 4.67m x 4.10m. I've had to reduce that considerably to make it fit here.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	3747947
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Rho Ophiuchi and the Blue Horsehead

Rho Ophiuchi and the Blue Horsehead

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