Wide-field view of the sky around the red giant star R Sculptoris

This wide-field image shows the patch of sky around the red giant variable star R Sculptoris. In this part of the sky far from the Milky Way, there are relatively few stars but many faint and distant galaxies can be seen. This view was created from photographs forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The spikes and orange circles around the star in this picture are artifacts of the telescope and photographic process and are not real.