Medium-sized image (1300x1030) Full-sized image (2600x2060)
A four-image mosaic of the Rosette Nebula in Monoceros. Each of the four images takes up one-quarter of the final image.
The Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237)surrounds the small, sparse open clusters NGC 2239 and 2244. Two other open clusters, NGC 2252 (bottom right) and Crumpler 97 (bottom middle) are also visible in this image. Centered in a rich part of the winter Milky Way, the Rosette is huge (80 by 60 arcminutes)but can be difficult to see visually. The CCD camera has little trouble gathering lots of detail even in light-polluted skies, however, with an H-Alpha filter.
Image details:
Takahashi Sky 90 at f/4.12 (with flattener/reducer for FS78)
StarlightXpress HX916 CCD Camera
Astro-Physics AP900GTO German Equatorial Mount
SBIG CFW-8A Color Filter Wheel
This is an LRGB image, with the luminance for each of the four panes made up of a total of 134 minutes of exposure time (90 minutes through a Shuler 10nm H-Alpha filter, and 44 minutes through a red filter). The RGB exposure times were 44:36:45 minutes. For the four panes that make up this image, that's a total of 860 minutes, or 14.3 hours.
Taken over 5 nights in late December 2003, from my backyard in Escondido, California. Image capture and sequencing was done with MaximDL/CCD, sub-frames were Sigma combined with Russ Croman's Sigma plugin for MaximDL/CCD, and the final LRGB layering, mosaic assembly, and image adjustments were done in PhotoShop 7.0.