The Rosette Nebula is a large, circular H II region located near one end of a giant molecular cloud in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way Galaxy.

The nebula lies at a distance of some 5,200 light-years from Earth and measures roughly 130 light years in diameter. The radiation from the young stars excite the atoms in the nebula, causing them to emit radiation themselves producing the emission nebula we see. The mass of the nebula is estimated to be around 10,000 solar masses.

It is believed that stellar winds from a group of O and B stars are exerting pressure on interstellar clouds to cause compression, followed by star formation in the nebula. This star formation is currently still ongoing.

A survey of the nebula with the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2001 revealed the presence of very hot, young stars at the core of the Rosette Nebula. These stars have heated the surrounding gas to a temperature in the order of 6 million kelvins causing them to emit copious amounts of X-rays. Source Wikipedia.

The image was captured with the Meade 12"LX200, using the Atik 383L+ mono at F6.11. To capture the entire nebula required a much smaller scope. But I wanted to try the narrow band and did not want to tear down my setup. I used Astronomik's 12nm Halpha, OIII and SII narrow band filters only. All subs were taken at 1x1 bin, -10C, and 10 minutes each.

Halpha: 22 subs (3.67 hr) on Jan 31st, Feb 5th, Feb 6th and Feb 7th.

OIII: 32 subs (5.33 hr) on Feb 10th and Feb 13th.

SII: 9 subs (1.50 hr) on Feb 14th.

Processing was done with PixInsight. This is the Hubble palette.

Red = SII, Green = Halpha, Blue = OIII

This is a slight crop, and North is up.

I received very good feedback on my first post of this image (non-Hubble: Ha for red, O3 for green, S2 for blue). Following advice from the good folks at the PixInsight, Cloudy Nights and Astrofili forums, I was able to create this second image. It uses the same colors as Hubble, and benefits greatly from PixInsight's power for combining and processing.