Rho Ophiuchi 2x2 Mosaic

This is a shot I've been dying to get for years: A close-up view of Rho Ophiuchi in very high definition! For the first time in my astrophotography journey, I decided to do a mosaic, which allowed me to get as much detail as possible on my target. I had only done one mosaic before, the one with Planet Mars and the "Green Comet", but that was only two panels and there wasn't really any challenge there.

 

The picture you see below is a 4-panel mosaic, taken with our RASA 8 f/2 telescope from the Bortle 2 skies of Utah Desert Remote Observatories. I spent approximately 2 hours on each panel, which was enough thanks to the fast optics and clean sky.

 

Creating the mosaic and processing was done in PixInsight, and was a lot of fun, There were some leftover lines from the stitching which I did my best to hide, and the end result looks nice.

 

This is a funny timing because today NASA revealed an image of Rho Ophiuchi taken by the JWST. You can see that tiny section in the mosaic if you look close enough! If not, you can see it pointed out here: www.galactic-hunter.com/post/rho-ophiuchi

Done