I pictured NGC2244 Rosette nebula almost three years ago. It was 6″ newtonian then and CCD camera. A few days ago again it came to my field of view – this time with 130mm refractor and CMOS camera. It is one of my favourites nebulae, although I must admit I have never seen it visually… But it is very rewarding target for astroimaging. Pretty large, so fits medium or even wide field astropictures nicely. But also very rich with details, so even setups with small field of view can grasp its detailed beauty. All these dark clouds, gaseous blobs, dust lanes, extremely hot blue stars that excite molecular hydrogen to shine and a few colder yellow-orange giants produces spectacular view.
The NGC2244 symbol does not identify the nebula itself. It is the open cluster within the nebula. The whole complex contains many NGC items:
- NGC 2237 – Part of the nebulous region (Also used to denote whole nebula)
- NGC 2238 – Part of the nebulous region
- NGC 2239 – Part of the nebulous region (Discovered by John Herschel)
- NGC 2244 – The open cluster within the nebula (Discovered by John Flamsteed in 1690)
- NGC 2246 – Part of the nebulous region
So, photons were collected in December 4th and 5th with Photoline 130mm refractor and QHY163M camera on EQ6 mount. As usual – from my backyard. It is total 320 minutes of H alpha, 60 minutes of Oiii, and 3 times 36 minutes of RGB each.
Larger version https://astrojolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2016-12-04-N2238HRGB4.jpg
Larger version https://astrojolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2016-12-04-N2238Hcrop.jpg
Clear skies!
