At the top of the picture is the star Rho Ophiuchi. It and its un-named companion lower in the frame lie at the edge of a cloud of dust, drifting between the stars. Their light is reflected from the minute grains, special photographic techniques revealing a delicate layered structure within a hazy boundary, known as IC 4603–04.

This photograph is a contact copy from an early UK Schmidt blue-light plate printed through an unsharp mask intended to emphasise the coarse detail in the dusty reflection nebula. This work was done in the 1970s, using a simple analogue system, long before digital image processing was possible.