The William Optics Redcat 51 is half lens/half telescope and is brand new. This was the first outing. A few growing pains and a couple of lessons for the next outing; but I am happy overall with the optical performance. I was a little skeptical about the ease of critical focus, as the Redcat uses a rotational focuser (like a regular lens); but the movement is fine enough (and stiff enough) that in conjunction with the built-in Bhatinov Mask; it is a snap to achieve critical focus.

This was a first pass at processing; and likely will be replaced as no calibration frames were used when stacking the subs. I just wanted to see the results!

The star that this complex is named for is the larger star in the tri-star cluster at the top of the image and is surrounded by the blue reflection nebula named IC 4604.The bright yellow star at the bottom left side of the image is Antares; and the open cluster Messier 4 (M4) is below and slightly to the right of Antares. A tiny second open cluster, NGC 6144, appears above and to the right of Antares.

Streams of Dark Nebulae flow from Rho Ophiuchi towards the Milky Way.

Shot using a Nikon D5300 (full spectrum modified); a Skywatcher EQ6-R equatorial mount; 215mm FL, 60mm guide scope using an Altair GPCAM 2 290M guide camera and PHD2 Guiding software; and a William Optics Redcat 51; 250mm FL lens.
Subs were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker; and the composite image was processed in PixInsight and Photoshop CC.

38 x 5 minute subs for a total integration of 190 minutes (3 hours and 10 minutes).

Imaged from Beckwith Township, Ontario, Canada