This photo was a 20 minute exposure shot through a Celestron WA-80 (esentially a 400mm f/5 lens) on Kodak E200 slide film. The bright red star in the center of this view is the star Antares in the constellation Scorpius. Since this star is found within the Zodiac, which contains the apparent path of the Sun and planets, it is commonly mistaken for Mars. In fact, it's name "Antares" indicates this. Broken down, "Ant-Ares," means "like Mars," "Ares" being the Greek name for the god of war. This star is rouhgly 600 light years distant. It's of a variety of stars known as Red Giants. And is the 13th brightest star in the nighttime sky. Taking into account its distance, this star is 10,000 times brighter than our star, the Sun. If this star were in place of the sun, its surface would reach out to about 3/4 the distance to Jupiter.....we'd be baked! Ok, the other main object of this shot is the Globular Cluster M4 to the right of Antares. It sits at a distance of about 7200 light years - relatively close for these types of objects. It's about 75 light years in diamater, meaning it takes the light from a star at the edge of this cluster 75 years to travel to the opposite side.