The Antares region in the constellation Scorpius is certainly one of the most colorful objects in the entire sky. I’ve seen many pictures of this area, but I haven’t tried to take it myself. As a rule, these pictures were taken in more southern regions and due to the very low horizon, I had little hope of success. Since the transfer of my observatory last summer, I have at least in theory the possibility of doing so, because until then my view was obscured by buildings. On the nights of June 12th and 13th, 2023, I diligently collected photons with 135 Samyangs and began to process the data. Not much splendor of nebulae could be seen in the rough stacks, but there were plenty of gradations from the artificial skylights. I think the biggest challenge was getting them clean, because that was the only way I could get the magic out of this area. I worked with LRGB filters and invested extra exposure time in H-alpha to intensify the areas of red nebula a bit. However, the reds shouldn’t appear too dominant, and so I moderately dosed the mixture accordingly.
For the blue channel, I doubled the exposure time compared to the red and green, since the absorption of this wavelength range is already large at a horizon height of only 10° (atmospheric extinction).
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