Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Monoceros (Mon)  ·  Contains:  NGC 2237  ·  NGC 2238  ·  NGC 2239  ·  NGC 2246  ·  NGC 2252  ·  Rosette A  ·  Rosette B  ·  Rosette Nebula  ·  The star 12Mon
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Caldwell 49 - The Rosette Nebula, SoundIdea
Caldwell 49 - The Rosette Nebula
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Caldwell 49 - The Rosette Nebula

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Caldwell 49 - The Rosette Nebula, SoundIdea
Caldwell 49 - The Rosette Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

Caldwell 49 - The Rosette Nebula

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Description

The Rosette Nebula is a stellar nursery, 130 light years across and 5,000 light years distant. The bright stars in the centre were born recently (on a cosmic timescale) from the dust and gas around them, and they now excite that same material with their radiation, causing the atoms to become excited and emit light of their own, making it visible to us.

I imaged this beautiful object at the Spring 2018 CalStar star party at Lake San Antonio in California. The site is very dark, around Bortle level 2. Naked-eye limiting magnitude is around 6.0.

It wasn't the best time of year to be imaging The Rosette, it's only about 60 degrees behind the sun in March, and I could only get an hour or two of data on it each night before it set. However it's one of the objects I was practicing my acquisition skills on throughout the winter and I wanted to see what I could get under dark skies and good seeing conditions.

The colours are false and have been chosen to represent three of the most common elements in the gas and dust of the nebula. Red is sulphur, green is hydrogen, and blue is oxygen. The abundance of hydrogen throughout the nebula turns the reds to orange, and the blues to cyan.

To our eyes, if they were sensitive enough, it would appear to be a deep pinkish red around the edges and a more purple colour in the middle.

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Caldwell 49 - The Rosette Nebula, SoundIdea