THE ROSETTE NEBULA
C49 / NGC 2244 • Star-forming emission nebula • Monoceros • 5200 light-years from Earth
🔭
Askar FRA400
📷
ZWO 2600MC Pro
🌃
Bortle 8
⏱️
15 hours
🗓️
February 2021
Overview
The Rosette Nebula is a vast emission nebula in the constellation Monoceros, shaped by intense stellar winds from a young central star cluster only a few million years old. These energetic stars have blown a large cavity, creating the distinctive hollowed out appearance at the heart of the nebula. The Rosette is also catalogued as Caldwell 49, while the central cluster itself is known as NGC 2244, whose radiation continues to sculpt the surrounding clouds of gas.
Background
This was a fun target to image because there’s so much detail to bring out. It’s tricky to get the colours looking nice during processing though. This particular version is an August 2025 reprocess of the original data.
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Kit list
This is the equipment I used to capture the image.
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Telescope: Askar FRA400
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Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro
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Guidescope: William Optics 32mm Slide-Base Uniguide
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Guidecam: ZWO ASI 120MM Mini
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Control: ASIAIR Plus
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Filter: Optolong L-eXtreme
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Example source data
Here’s an example single subframe and freshly integrated stack, just with simple stretches applied.
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