One of the few galaxies bright enough to reveal details in Ophiuchus is NGC6384. The entire constellation is laden with dust, and very near the zone of avoidance for galaxies. This object, a faint 11.1 magnitude inclined type Sb spiral, is 7'x4' in size, and is definitely of the class of galaxies called low surface brightness. A small deeply colored bar like structure occupies the innermost regions surrounded by multiple arms with no visible HII regions, but a few stellar associations are present as knots in the arms. The Wray Color Atlas of Galaxies mentions the extremely yellow old population of stars at the core, and a few blue knots in the arms. A B-V index of .73 is very deeply colored for a galaxy, mostly due to the core component.

The faint arms were brought up to visibility with the use of DDP which also gave some of the brighter stars glows around them from the nights poor seeing and plentiful smoke in the air from local forest fires.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
CCD Camera:  SBIG ST7E w/Enhanced Cooling
Exposure:  LRGB = 60:20:20:36 (RGB Binned 2x2)
Filters:  RGB Tricolor
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing 8/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  21 C
CCD Temperature:  -20 C
Processing:  Maxim DL, Photoshop, PW Pro.