Instrument

Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5.0 (530 mm F.L.)  Captured at 3.5 arcsec/pixel.  Shown resampled to 14.7 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon Filters

Acquisition Data

12/27/2008 to 1/18/2009 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3

Exposure

SII    510 min. (17  x 30 min. bin 1x1)

Ha    300 min. (10 x 30 min. bin 1x1)
OIII  420 min. (14  x 30 min. bin 1x1)

RGB  240 min. ( 8 x 10 min. each bin 1x1)

SII,Ha & OIII are mapped to RGB respectivly.  An RGB overlay was added for the star colors.

Click here for a BW Ha version

Click here for a natural color version.

Software

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions and Russell Croman's GradientXTerminator

CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject & combine the sub exposures.

PhotoShop for non-linear stretching and color combine.

North is to the top.

All three images were created using the Hubble color palette. The colors in the top image follow the spirit of the palette and the hydrogen (green), sulfur (red) and oxygen (blue) areas can easy be identified. The lower two images use the same filter mapping but great liberties were taken with the channel levels and hues of individual colors.

The Rosette Nebula is a large, circular hydrogen region located near one end of a giant molecular cloud in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way Galaxy. The open cluster, NGC 2244, is closely associated with the nebulosity, the stars having been formed from the nebula's matter. The Nebula is about 100 light-years across and is about 5000 light-years away.