In the middle of the picture is the multiple star Rho Ophiuchi, whose light is seen through a veil of interstellar dust. The tiny grains are shepherded by the magnetic fields of the Milky Way so we see them as streaks filtered and scattered by interstellar dust and aligned into streaks by magnetic fields in the Milky Way. The dust is largely quiescent, like the dust associated with the Pleiades, and, like the Pleiades, it appears a delicate sky-blue on colour photographs.

This image is derived from a very early test plate, taken in blue light by the UK Schmidt telescope in June, 1974, and this picture is an image made by printing from the plate itself. Subsequent, wider-field images in this short series demonstrate how the appearance of these delicate structures can be modified using the original plate and an obscure process known as unsharp masking. Here, an analogue technique was used in a darkroom, but now unsharp masking now widely available in digital image processing programs.