The Antares - M4 Region

IC 4605, Sh2-9, M4,
NGC 6144

This is a detail of the Rho Ophiuchi Nebula Complex, which is one of the most colorful and most beautiful regions in the sky. It contains dark nebulae where lanes of obscuring dust hide background stars, blue reflection nebulae where interstellar dust is illuminated by nearby stars and red emission nebulae where hydrogen gas itself is emitting light. The diversity of color in this region is remarkable and unusual.

The orange-glowing red-giant star Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpio, dominates the photo at the lower left, it enlightens a "selfmade" (by stellar wind) nebulous cloud of yellowish cool gas which is designated IC 4605. Sigma Scorpii is another bright star at right which is surrounded by the red emission nebulosity Sh2-9.

The globular cluster of stars at the lower right is the globular star cluster M4. There is another fainter globular cluster in this field of view, NGC 6144, northwest of Antares.

Rho Ophiuchi Nebula Complex, telelens photograph.
Globular Cluster M4, refractor photograph.

Exposure Data

Instrument: TMB 4.1" f/6.2 APO
F/stop: 6.2
Exposure: Composite of three exposures, 40 + 25 + 40 minutes
Film: Kodak Ektachrome E200 / Fuji Provia 400F
Exposure start: 0:03 / 2:16 / 0:14 MESZ
Date: June 2, 2002 / May 30, 2003 / June 6, 2003
Location: Ebenwaldhöhe, Lower Austria
Conditions: Visual limiting magnitude 6.0 mag, seeing 3, temperature 8°C, no wind, no dew / visual limiting magnitude 5.5 mag, seeing 3, temperature 16.5°C, no wind, no dew / visual limiting magnitude 5.9 mag, seeing 4, temperature 15.5°C, slight wind, no dew
Autoguider: Meade Pictor 216 XT, max. error 2 / 1 / 2
Enhancement: Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Notes: Extracting the faint nebulosity while at the same time maintaining nice tight stars was hard work. No filter was used.

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