Tom J Martinez PhotoBlog: Colorful Nebulae around the Antares and Ophiuchus Region

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Colorful Nebulae around the Antares and Ophiuchus Region

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This is one of the most colorful regions in the Milky Way. Visually, even with the largest telescope, you won't see it anything like this. It takes long exposure photographs to bring out the beautiful colors, and is why I like to take pictures of the night sky.
Known as the Rho-Ophiuchus Nebula Complex, it consists of blue reflection nebulae, red emission nebulae, dusty, dark nebulae and a rare yellow-orange reflection nebula surrounding the Red Giant star Antares at the lower-left of the image. The triple star Rho and the blue reflection nebula surrounding it is located in the middle-lower section of the image. The colors of these nebulae are fascinating, but what is really amazing to me are the "Dark Nebulae". These filaments of dark-brown regions consist of light years of dust. So much dust they block the Milky Way starlight in the background. Dark Nebulae were discovered by the pioneering astrophotographer Edward E. Barnard in the late 1800s. He created a catalog of 349 dark nebulae. Each has a number with the letter B in front of it.
Other objects in the image include Globular Clusters. M4 is largest and easiest to see. It is the big ball of stars located below Antares. Very much smaller is NGC6144, just to the right and a little below Antares. Three others, even smaller globulars are in the image, but look like large stars (To see where they are, take a look at the annotated image below).