Home sweet home II

The images cover a field of about 130x50° in the sky. Most visible deep sky objects are neighbored to our sun, just 4,000 – 7,000 light years away. Some “holes” in the dust clouds allow us to have a deeper view into the galaxy: The Sagittarius cloud M24 is part of the second next spiral arm, the Norma arm, 12,000 – 16,000 light years away. The globular cluster NGC6522 shines through the so called Baade window - it is located beyond the galactic center.

Starting from the “Pawn Nebula” IC 4628 in the south, many more objects are visible when we climb up the Milky Way: NGC 6334, NGC 6357, M 6 and M 7 the bright HII regions M 8, M 20, M 17, M 16 and NGC 6604 form a chain in Northern direction. Additionally many open clusters are visible in the band of the Milky Way whereas some globular clusters outside the band are located in the halo ot the galaxy. The striking and colorful Antares region is quite near to us – here, the giant star Antares ionizes surrounding gas clouds and produces dust particles. In the northern part of the image many HII regions in Cygnus and Cepheus are visible (NGC 7000, IC1396 etc.) as well as the Veil nebula. Two planets are also part of the scenery: Mars and Saturn are located close the colorful nebula of the Antares region.