The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is a vibrant stellar nursery known for its spectacular displays of dark and bright nebulae surrounding the young, hot stars of the Rho Ophiuchi multiple star system. This image highlights the colorful Antares nebula and the Blue Horsehead Nebula shown in the upper right. Located in the constellations Scorpius and Ophiuchus this complex is approximately 460 light-years away. 

This image was made with a Nikon Z7II and a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 105mm f/2.8. A total of 80 30 second images were taken at ISO1250 for a total exposure time of 40 minutes. Star tracking was done with a Fornax LighTack II. The raw images were converted to TIF using RawTherapee, which were then aligned using Deep Sky Stacker. The star aligned images were then stacked using sigma clipped averaging on program astro-sca. The stacked image was then stretched and color corrected using astro-color-stretch. Both astro-sca and astro-color-stretch are Python programs and are available here in the astrophotography software downloads page.