During April and May, the Rho Ophiuchus cloud complex and the area around Antares rises mid-evening and arcs right overhead at NZ latitudes. Such a photogenic part of the night sky, captured here with my ASI6200 mono camera paired up with my trusty old manual Nikon 180mm f2.8 ED AIS lens, giving a far bigger field of view than with my Tak. Stopping the nine-bladed diaphragm of this lens down to f3.2 produces rather nice 18-pointed diffraction spikes on the bright stars, which I quite like.

The Rho Ophiuchus region is one of the most spectacularly colourful areas of the entire sky. It contains a beautiful mix of emission and reflection nebulae, opaque dust lanes obscuring the background stars and several globular clusters. The yellow giant star - Antares - is the brightest star in this image surrounded by a yellow reflection nebula. At the bottom left of the image is the triple star system, Rho Ophiuchi which is surrounded by a region of blue reflection nebula (IC 4604), imaged HERE in more detail. Dark, opaque dust lanes can be seen around and to the right of this region. The small bluish reflection nebula below Antares is IC 4605, reflecting the light from the 4.5 mag. star i Scorpii. At the 7 o'clock position from Antares is the bright star Alniyat (Sigma Scorpii) - a short period variable star surrounded by the bright emission nebula Sh2-9. To the left of Antares is the bright globular cluster M4, and much closer to Antares is the small globular cluster NGC 6144.