Deep Sky Astrophotography

Antares and neighbors in the Scorpio Constellation (“Wide field image”)

Scorpio is one of the few constellations, where the name truly matches what you see in the sky. The shape of a scorpion is clearly visible. And once you have seen Scorpio, you will always recognize him again. Unfortunately, there is an unhandy condition to seeing this beauty with your own eyes: you should not live too high up in the northern hemisphere (like many of us do). But the further south you are heading, the higher up in the summer sky Scorpio goes for his nightly stroll.

Now let’s talk about Antares. He is a big guy. I mean: really big! He is one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye. Imagine him replacing our sun, and he would fill our solar system way beyond Mars! This is why Antares is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpio and number 16 in the overall ranking list of the brightest objects in our night sky. As a matter of fact, he is 10.000 brighter than our own sun. Luckily, Antares is nearly 600 light years away, so no sun cream needed ;) He is a red supergiant, glowing in a colour that looks quite like Mars. As he is following a path similar to Mars, Antares is even often mistaken for Mars ;) But not on this image: you’ll see Antares in the middle at the right of the image, glowing orange in midst of an orange nebula – and no Mars around ;)

The area around Antares is one of the most colourful in our universe. Our human eye is blind to colours in the night, but (some) cameras do not quite suffer this restriction. Therefore you can see on this image some colour ranges that our night sky kindly provides.

Don’t miss to have a short look to M 4 (or Messier 4) above and on the right of Antares. M 4 is a globular cluster of stars very close to Antares, already identified and catalogued by Charles Messier in 1764. It has about the diameter of the moon. Hardly visible to the human eye, you can clearly resolve individual stars on the image.

The image was taken in La Palma, La Isla Bonita of the Canary Islands. The overall exposure time was 2.5 hours, shot with an 85 mm camera lens. You will also find here a close up image of the same area.

PS: don’t wait too long to have an own look at Antares. As a red supergiant, he is at the end of this life. So he might blow up tomorrow in a massive supernova explosion. But he also might be around for another couple of million years ;) How knows?

La PalmaLa Isla BonitaCanary IslandsAntaresAlpha ScorpiiConstellationScorpioZodiacRSGRed Super GiantMessier 4M 4NGC 6121