In this hobby, some nights everything goes wrong, but conversely, sometimes everything goes right. I experienced both sides of that spectrum Sunday morning when I shot this photo of the Antares region of the constellation Scorpio. I was almost shot by a neighbor who thought I was breaking into the houses on the lake where I was photographing (who said this hobby isn’t dangerous?)… so the night got off to a bumpy start! Fortunately, after the moon finally went down around 1:00am and Scorpio rose in the south-east, I turned my 200mm f/4 Canon lens to the bright summer star Antares. This is a composite of 14 5 minute exposures of the antares region, commonly referred to as “the jewel box of the milky way”, a little bit of everything going on here! This photo has an unusual orange reflection nebula (interstellar dust clouds, illuminated by the bright orange star Antares), a globular star cluster (m4), a star shrouded in dust clouds (IC4603), a red emission nebula (SH 2-9), two blue reflection nebula (IC4605, IC4604) and finally a triple star system (p-ophiuchi). Shot at f/4.5, ISO800, noise reduction on, tracked with a Losmandy G-11 mount. View the additional photo of the rho dust cloud in this series for a closeup of this fascinating area.

On the left is the closeup of the triple star rho ophiuchus and IC4605, both of which are shrouded in thick clouds of interstellar dust.  On the right is the bright summer star Antares with globular cluster M4 just to its right.  The bright star Antares is what gives the area it's yellowish orange glow.