Rho Ophiuchi - going to Namibia

[marcoverstraaten]

In May this year, my wife and I went to Namibia to combine daytrips and astrophotography (hard combo with game drives in morning & evening & driving at daytime).

Started out at Astrofarm Tivoli the first 4 nights with mostly cloudy weather , but after that, things went really well for stargazing!
To get the most out of it, I rented a scope at Tivoli (only 1 object more or less finished) but I also brought a TS Star 71 APO (the perfect (only?) small scope for fullframe sensors), a Nikon D810a and a Vixen GP as a mount. So a really transportable setup.
This picture was taken after we left Tivoli into the hot Namibian desert near Sossusvlei. It's a mosaic of two panels with the Star 71 Apo/ NIkon D810a combination. Total exposure is 150 minutes (only, I'ts hard to stick longer to one object when you live at 52 degrees north). 800 iso with subexposures of 10 minutes. Stitching is done by PTGui. The original file is 55 megapixel.

[Droogie 2001]

Stunning, well done.

[MikeODay]

What a wonderful image, well done.

[Ikonnikov]

Looks great, the colour is very nice! Glad to see your Star 71 is playing ball unlike a number of others on this forum.

[PatrickGilliland]

Sounds like a great trip and the results are excellent.  Love the colours of RHO but doubt i will ever get to image from here sufficiently, sounds like a road trip may be in order here as well.

Paddy