Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  The Zoomify image scale is 1.19 to 3.33 arcsec / pixel

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ FW8 filter wheel & AstroDon 6nm SII, Ha and a 3nm OIII filter.

Acquisition Data

2/10/2011 to 3/28/2011 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

SII   690 min. (23 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

Hα    570 min. (19 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

OIII  630 min. (21 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

Click here for the RGB color image.

Click here for an Ha filtered b/w image.

Software & Processing Notes

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS and Noel Carboni's actions..

• PixFix32 (pre-beta) to repair column defects.

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

• PhotoShop for color combine &  on-linear stretching.

• Noiseware Pro, a PhotoShop plug-in.

Comment

North is to the left.

This is a close up view of an interesting area inside the Rosette Nebula.  NGC 2237-9 are 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.

Both 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 bottom image uses the same filter mapping with adjustments to the channel levels to create the blue and gold motif, made popular by the Hubble Imaging Team.