Scorpius Region

The area near the Scorpion's sting, the pair of bright bluish stars in the image below, abounds with deep sky objects. Below and far right of the sting is Ptolemy's Cluster, M7, whilst M6, The Butterfly Cluster, lies almost directly below. The field is awash with myriad distant unresolved stars and areas of dark, dusty nebulae and molecular clouds blocking out the light of distant stars.  Conspicuous are several emission regions illuminated by hot, young stars within, with four almost in a line - upper left is the Cat's Paw Nebula (NGC 6334), below that is the Lobster Nebula (NGC 6537), the round nebulae of Sh2-13 and finally an unidentified nebula (at least in my star chart) to the right of the small star cluster NGC 6425.

The image was published in the August/September 2014 edition of "Australian Sky and Telescope", pages 5 and 92.