Astrophotographer Greg Meyer captured a wide ranging view of the Rho Ophiuchi stellar nursery and Messier 4 globular cluster whilst attending a stargazing match in Texas remaining month.
Meyer used a thermoelectrically cooled monochrome astronomy digicam fixed on a compact Radian Raptor 61mm telescope to snap 177 separate three- to five-minute exposures of the huge interstellar cloud. All advised, it took a grand overall of 14 hours and 45 mins to symbol Rho Ophiuchi with a sequence of pink, inexperienced, blue and luminance filters throughout the 2025 Texas Star Party stargazing match, which happened from April 20 to April 27.
The ensuing knowledge was once then expertly processed the use of the astrophotography tool PixInsight, along Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to create a wealthy interstellar vista of swirling gasoline clouds, and darkish, dusty filaments.
TOP TELESCOPE PICK:
Want to discover wonders of the sun gadget and the celebrities past for your self? The Celestron NexStar 4SE is perfect for inexperienced persons short of high quality, dependable and fast perspectives of celestial gadgets. For a closer glance, see our Celestron NexStar 4SE evaluate.
“A favorite among astrophotographers, I wanted to try it from a dark sky area, and I was at the Texas Star Party in April 2025,” stated Meyer in an e-mail to Space.com discussing his remark of Rho Ophiuchi. “This object was once emerging after middle of the night with the Milky Way, so [I] was once in a position to get some excellent knowledge with my transportable rig for a number of transparent nights.”
The Rho Ophiuchi nebula gadget is the nearest star-forming area to Earth, and as such has come beneath the scrutiny of each the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope lately.
Brightest some of the stars captured in Meyer’s colourful portrait is the getting older pink large Antares, which can also be discovered illuminating the appropriate hand aspect of the cosmic vista. Above Antares close to the highest of the body is the well-known Messier 4 globular cluster, which is estimated to be house to a few 100,000 stellar our bodies, in line with NASA. Another dense town of stars designated NGC 6144 can also be noticed to the higher left of Antares, whilst the intense stellar trio of Rho Ophiuchi B, C and D seem to light up the encompassing cloud construction on the most sensible left of the picture.
As is nearly all the time the case when coping with deep sky gadgets, the other components comprising Meyer’s scene are nowhere close to as shut to each other as they seem. For instance, NASA estimates that Rho Ophiuchi is positioned some 390 light-years from Earth, whilst Antares — which seems to be utterly enveloped within the nebulous construction — is kind of 550 light-years away. Messier 4, in the meantime, is much more far off, sitting some 5,500 light-years from our planet.
Editor’s Note: If you have an interest in sharing your astrophotography with the readers at Space.com, please ship your picture(s), feedback, and your identify and placement to spacephotos@area.com.