Infrared Rho Ophiuchi Complex

A vast cloud of dust famous for being one of the most colorful and most commonly photographed scenes in the night sky, the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex takes on a wholly different appearance in infrared light from WISE.

Here, where visible light reveals very little, instead silhouetting a dark and mysterious nebula, infrared wavelengths have no trouble penetrating this stellar dustbin. In the darkest reaches resides a stellar nursery, shown just above center, which glows intensely with newborn stars and young stellar objects. Just below and to the right of the nursery is a curtain of glowing dust surrounding Sigma Scorpii, appearing reddish in this image. Another smaller curtain of glowing reddish dust is seen surrounding Tau Scorpii to the lower left. The brightest star, appearing white and near center, is nearby Antares. To the lower left one may note the density of the stars is becoming quite high as the Milky Way's center is approached. At the top, the glow of the zodiacal light is present. I tried to minimize its appearance as it got rather oppressively bright otherwise.

This mosaic is comprised of 4 channels, made up of 53 tiles each for a total of 212 tiles. I've been working on it on and off for about a month.

I used the dual two-channel/pseudogreen approach with this image once again.

Dust Group: Red: W4 (22 μm) Green: pseudogreen Blue: W3 (12 μm)

Star Group: Red: W2 (4.6 μm) Green: pseudogreen Blue: W1 (3.4 μm)