Description:
Rho Ophiuchi is one of the most vibrant and dynamic regions in our night sky, located in the constellation Ophiuchus. This stunning area is renowned for its brilliant colours and complex structure, making it a favourite target for astrophotographers worldwide. The Rho Ophiuchi complex spans approximately 14 light-years and is located about 460 light-years from Earth.
In this image, you can see the intricate interplay of reflection nebulae, dark dust clouds, and glowing regions of ionised gas. The prominent star Antares, located near the middle top of the image, casts a golden hue over its surroundings, contrasting beautifully with the deep blues and purples of the nebula. The region is a stellar nursery, with many young stars embedded within the dense clouds of gas and dust, actively forming new stars.
What makes this particular image special is that I captured it from my Bortle 6/7 suburban backyard near Melbourne, Australia. Living about 500 metres from a highway with many street lights, broadband imaging is nearly impossible from this location. However, Optolong kindly sent me their Quad Band filter to test out. I waited for a few moonless nights to give it my best shot, but to be honest, I thought it would be a waste of time since I’ve never achieved anything great broadband-wise from my backyard before.
I hope the image speaks for itself. My main goal was to see how this filter would perform in terms of colour and contrast from my location, and I think it did amazingly well. Optically, it performed very well. I did notice a small halo around Antares, but that was easily addressed in processing. I’m currently testing this filter on a couple of other targets to get a better idea of its overall performance.
While this filter is no substitute for a dark sky, it makes broadband imaging possible from my location, provided there’s little to no moon and the target is high in the sky. Overall, it was a pleasant surprise. Rho Ophiuchi is probably the most colourful part of our sky and certainly one of the brightest reflection nebulae out there. Shooting this with a Redcat 51 and an OSC camera with a relatively inexpensive filter shows what can be done with accessible equipment on a target that most people can access. I hope this inspires a few folks to get out there and give it a shot.
It’s important to note that processing the image still has a massive impact on the outcome. Don’t expect this result to come out of the first few shots you take from the camera. After processing, this is what you can achieve. I didn’t have to do too much work on the colours to get them right. After colour calibration using SPCC and gradient management with GraXpert, it was a pretty straightforward processing affair.
