My Cosmic Camel

One of my favorite areas of the sky! I wanted to compose a shot that featured both the Rho area (multi-colored nebula on the right) and the Blue Horse (blue nebula on the left), with the dark nebulosity streaming down. Upon showing this image to my buddy Phil, he commented it looked like a camel -- it does! Just follow the blue horse (camel) head down then back up to the Rho "hump". Pretty funny.

This is one of my "project images" I have been working on for a few weeks. It took a while because I kept screwing up! I started this project as a multi-focal length mosaic (using multiple exposures with different size lenses to gather more detail in specific areas, then composite).

I gathered the detail on the Rho and Blue Horse areas while at the Texas Star Party, but my wide field image composition was no good. So, I traveled to 3RF to finish collecting the data. I managed to get good skies and finished, but my calibration frames were messed up. Soooo... after jumping through many hoops, I finally got my image done!

This area of the sky is in Scorpius, near our galactic center. It is a summer classic : )

Image stats:
Nikon D700 at ISO 1600
Rho detail -- 180mm f/4 22x3min
Blue Horse detail -- 180mm f/4 12x3min
Wide Field -- 85mm f/4 40x3min

CCDStack, CS4
Mosaic registered in Registar