The ρ Ophiuchi cloud complex is one of the coolest DSO's I have had the pleasure of photographing. From the bright yellow-orange of the Antares Nebula to the white glow of HIP 80462, the brilliant blues of ρ Oph and i Sco, and the faint red arc about Alniyat, this gas cloud is a sight to behold. It even features two globular clusters: the great Crab Cluster, and the much fainter NGC 6144.
I hope to one day come back to this region and take a wide-field shot of this, the Blue Horsehead nebula, and the nebulosity around Fang and Dschubba in the Scorpion's Crown. If I get a dedicated astrophotography camera, it would truly be a sight to behold. As of right now, I am using an unmodified DSLR and losing out on most of the reds of the gas clouds.
Acquisition Details:
- Equipment:
- Camera: Nikon D3400 unmodded
- Lens: AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II
- Mount: Star Adventurer 2i
- Bortle 5.9
- Integration Time: 1062x30s=31860s=8.85h
- Calibration Frames: 60 darks (30s), 60 flats (1/4000s), & 60 biases (1/4000s) per night, over four nights.
Processing: Siril 1.4.4
- Stacking: Naztronomy's OSC PreProcessing Script
- Background Extraction
- Spectrophotometic Color Calibration (SPCC)
- StarNet Star Removal
- Generalised Hyperbolic Stretch Transformation
- Remove Green Noise
- Curves Transformation
- VeraLux StarComposer
- VerLux Silentium