Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex (Sean Liang)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Scorpius (Sco) · Contains: 19 Sco · 20 Sco) · 21 Sco) · 22 Sco · 23 Sco) · 5 Oph · Al Niyat (σ Sco · Al Niyat (τ Sco · Alniyat I · Cor Scorpii · IC 4603 · IC 4604 · IC 4605 · Kalb al Akrab (α Sco · M 4 · NGC 6121 · Part of the constellation Scorpius (Sco) · The star 25 Sco · The star Alniyat · The star Alniyat II · The star Antares · The star i Sco · The star ο Sco · The star ρ Oph · Vespertilio · rho Oph Nebula

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Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

Link: https://www.onebackpacker.com/behind-the-lens/rho-ophiuchi-cloud-complex

Powered byPixInsight

Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex

Link: https://www.onebackpacker.com/behind-the-lens/rho-ophiuchi-cloud-complex

This is perhaps one of my favourite deep-sky objects for its breathtaking structure. It shows up in many of my Milky Way photos and it’s hard to find a more colourful region in the entire night sky.

At first glance, the most striking feature is the sheer amount of colour. Why is it so colourful?
Well, the pinkish-red regions got their colour from a process called ionisation. Have you ever seen neon light that glows pinkish red? Neon lights glow pinkish-red because there is hydrogen in them; the pinkish-red nebulas in the image are made up of hydrogen too. They are gigantic neon lights hundreds of light-years across, made of hydrogen gas, powered by extremely powerful stars!

The yellow and blue parts have their colours for different reasons. The blue regions are reflected light whereas the yellowish part is light going through the clouds. They have different colours because blue light tends to bounce off small particles whereas red-orange-yellow light just goes through(Rayleigh scattering). This might sound like physics from an alien world, but we actually see this phenomenon every day. That’s why we have blue skies and yellowish sunsets!

Another striking feature is the dark nebulas; those are thick-dense interstellar dust no visible light can penetrate through. The long streak of thick clouds actually makes a dust lane that connects to the milky way.

This region is sometimes called the ‘Antares Nebula Complex’ because it hosts the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius - Antares. Antares is a red giant, the size of which dwarfs our own sun. It’s so gigantic that if you place it at the centre of our solar system, it would engulf Mercury, venus, earth, mars and even Jupiter!

(The data was acquired from Telescopelive, which I processed using pixinsight and photoshop).

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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Distribution of subject types

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
Solar system
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Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
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Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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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.

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.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
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
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5869141
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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