What Is The Rosette Nebula?
The Rosette Nebula (also known as Caldwell 49) is a wonderful diffuse cloud of dust and gas full of H II (Hydrogen II), located in the constellation Monoceros. The open cluster NGC 2244 (also known as Caldwell 50) within the nebula was discovered by John Flamsteed in 1690. The nebula and cluster lie at a distance of 5,000 light-years from Earth. NGC 2244 consisted of young stars which recently had been formed from the nebula’s matter. Star formation is still in progress in this vast cloud of interstellar material.
The parts of this object have the following NGC (New General Catalogue) numbers: NGC 2237 (part of the nebulous region, also used to represent the whole nebula), NGC 2238 (part of the nebulous region), NGC 2239 (part of the nebulous region, discovered by John Herschel), NGC 2244 (the open cluster within the nebula) and NGC 2246 (part of the nebulous region).
This splendid nebula is really popular because of its shape which looks like a flower. It’s a very wanted target among many astrophotographers. By the way, it’s also one of my favorites :-).
The image at the left, I took during several nights at the end of 2020 and at the beginning of 2021.
The Rosette Nebula fits beautifully in a square field of view like the square sensor of the ZWO ASI533MC Pro offers.
For this image I used 2 different filters: a duo-narrowband to bring out the Hydrogen alpha and a UV/IR cut filter to get the natural star colors (RGB). Afterward, I blended the H-alpha and the RGB data in Astro Pixel Processor.
One night, I photographed the Rosette Nebula while the Moon was shining bright. Although I was using a duo-narrowband filter, it was very challenging.
Image details
- Telescope: TS Optics 86SDQ 86mm F5.4 Quadruplet 4-Element Flatfield APO Refractor (TS86SDQ)
- Mount: iOptron CEM on tri-pier iOptron
- Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro
- Filter: ZWO Duo-Narrowband 1.25″ and ZWO UV/IR cut filter 1.25″ (ZWO EFW Mini)
- Dew Heater: DEW NOT
- Telescope Control: ZWO ASIair gen.1
- Software: Astro Pixel Processor (stacking & pre-processing); PixInsight (post-processing)
Data captured on the following nights:
(ZWO DUO-NARROWBAND)
07/11/2020
12/11/2020
13/11/2020
24/02/2021
(ZWO UV-IR CUT FILTER)
11/02/2021
13/02/2021
Total integration time: 9.9 hrs -> Bortle class 6
No guiding
