A colorful cosmic canvas

Anushtup Roy Choudhury from Kolkata, India Looming over the Himalayas in this vista are the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex and the Blue Horsehead Nebula (IC 4592). The former’s blue reflection nebulae, red clouds of emission, and dark dust lanes spread across Ophiuchus and Scorpius some 460 light-years away. The latter, lit by the blue subgiant Nu Scorpii, sits at roughly the same distance. The photographer stacked 200 tracked frames of 25 seconds each (nearly 1.4 hours of total exposure), taken at f/1.8 and ISO 1600 with a Sony mirrorless camera and a 135mm lens from Zanskar, India.