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The colourful region surrounding the bright triple star; Rho Ophiuchus. The area is highlighted by the bright star Antares, a red supergiant 40,000 times more luminous than our sun. The star is immense. So large that if it were placed at the centre of our solar system, its edge would stretch almost to the planet Jupiter. The colourful clouds surrounding Rho Ophiuchus represents the visible counterpart of a much larger but invisible molecular cloud permeating the region and known as the Ophiuchus cloud. This giant cloud is one of the nearest regions of star formation in the local Milky Way at a distance of about 520 light years.

Credit: Robert Gendler.