Photo of the Week for May 11, 2018

Although not ideally placed for Canadian observers, the swath of sky surrounding first-magnitude red giant star, Antares, is crowded with interesting deep-sky objects. Most conspicuous is the lovely, bright globular cluster, M4, just west of Antares. But as this photo by Martin Palenik illustrates, there’s also a lot of nebulosity in the vicinity. Most of the material surrounds Antares, as well as the tightly-spaced double star Rho Ophiuchi, a few degrees north-northwest of Antares, near the top centre of the image. Rho itself appears single in the picture, but is accompanied by two wide companions to form an attractive triangle of white stars swathed in blue nebulosity.

Martin captured this colourful portrait on April 21, 2018, from the North Frontenac Dark Sky Preserve, located in southern Ontario. He used a QHY163M CCD camera and Samyang 135mm f/2 lens (working at f/2.8) to record a total of 54, 120-second exposures through red, green and blue filters.