IC 4628 Nebula in Lower Scorpius
This is a 37*5 = 185 minute (~3hr) total exposure from April, 2010 from the Davis Mountains. Takahashi TOA 130 Telescope (a 5" APO refractor) with reducer, AP 900GTO mount, and QHY8 CCD Camera & normal workflow.
This picture shows an area around Scorpius' tail, including nebula IC 4628. This is where the tail makes a hard left (east) turn and starts to curl back around. I found the center area of the nebula to appear to be heart-shaped in this older version, but there's another heart nebula already (Heart Nebula, IC 1805). Someone has dubbed this "The Prawn Nebula, but I don't know that I see the prawn!
The location of this object is always very low in the southern skies when visible from the US. The further north you are, the lower in the sky. Scorpius is a summer constellation and there's a limited part of the year where it's above the horizon. The easiest time to view it in North America is mid-summer, the further south the better. For example, it will be at its highest point at about 11:30 p.m. local time at the beginning of July, and then that same location 4 minutes earlier in the night each night later. It will barely clear the southern horizon in the northern states.
Image Details: 11x4 = 44 total minutes exposure on 4/29/2006 at HAS site near Columbus, TX, USA. 4/30 by the time this was taken around 3:30 in the morning. Canon EOS 20Da (unmodified), Takahashi TOA 130 (a 5" APO refractor), Losmandy G-11 mount. My current image processing workflow is here.
Pictures of IC4628 (red emission nebula), NGC 6242 (small cluster on left) and NGC 6231 (cluster on right) between Zeta and Mu Scorpii (check out this link). Thanks to Kenneth Drake for pointing out Barnard 48, the dark nebula just right of bottom center (no stars there!)
5/16/2004, Davis Mountains, TX
Photo by Dick Locke
5 minute exposure, STV auto guider
Losmandy GM-11
Nikon 300mm f2.8 lens @ f2.8
Nikon F2 camera, Kodak LE 400 film
Negative Scan, Nikon Coolscan IV ED, Processed in Photoshop
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