Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex (Joon Ren)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Scorpius (Sco) · Contains: 19 Sco · 19 omi Sco · 20 Sco) · 20 sig Sco · 21 Sco) · 21 alf Sco · 22 Sco · 22 i Sco · 5 Oph · 5 rho Oph · Al Niyat (σ Sco · Alniyat · Alniyat I · Antares · B42 · Cor Scorpii · HD146997 · HD147105 · HD147166 · HD147196 · HD147284 · HD147384 · HD147432 · HD147433 · HD147592 · HD147681 · HD147701 · HD147703 · HD147743 · HD147809 · And 62 more.

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Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

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Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is a group of interstellar clouds located near the head of Scorpius. It is an active star-forming region consisting of different dark and colorful reflection nebulae reflecting starlight. As the region lies just off the Milky Way core, it is present in many Milky Way widefield photographs. There are also some minor galaxies visible in the lower left quadrant.

This is a three panel mosaic consisting of around 2.5 hours each. It was a fun challenge, taking on a multi-panel broadband object feasible only in darker skies. The local rainforest climate also threw in an extra problem of unpredictable weather, putting a high risk that dark sky trips may not yield anything. In the end, I managed to gather enough data from two different locations. Scorpius does rise pretty high up at my latitude, so I was at least able to avoid shooting through excessive atmosphere and light pollution domes. I did consider a camera lens to capture everything within a single panel, but I decided to go big or go home. Worse case, it would have been a multi-year project. I went with 3 minutes rather than the usual 1 minute subs for broadband due to darker skies as well as to keep the data size down. This made losing subs due to clouds or disturbances riskier but I was already going big anyways.

I usually tend towards png formats but the final image was so big that it could not be kept under 25MB even after scaling down till squarish stars. Hence I had to use jpeg which has more banding but is able to accommodate something close to the original resolution.

Original
Final
O

Deep Sky Mosaics
Cloudy Nights

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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.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
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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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9703219
PixInsight job	XW7ZCRLZ20BN1JR30SI4TYZZNJHP0GWJ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	16h26m26s.80
RA (top/left)	16h33m26s.24
RA (top/right)	16h19m42s.10
RA (bottom/right)	16h19m07s.36
RA (bottom/left)	16h33m28s.52

Dec (center)	-25°29′21″.0
Dec (top/left)	-22°52′59″.3
Dec (top/right)	-22°50′46″.7
Dec (bottom/right)	-28°04′15″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	-28°06′36″.3

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Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

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Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

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