Rosette Nebula - Astrophotogallery

It's no prize winner but I was surprised I could get this much out of 2 minute exposures.

Rosette Nebula (NGC2244 [open cluster in center], NGC2239, NGC2237, NGC2238, NGC2245)
2010-02-06
Middlebury, VT
Constellation - Monoceros

The Rosette Nebula is a star birth region just east of the constellation Orion (about 1 hand width to the right of the red giant star, Betelgeuse, in Orion's shoulder). The young open star cluster in the middle is slowly blowing a bubble in middle of this large
cloud of gas and dust. The narrow dark fingers or lanes above and the the right of cluster are denser clumps with new born stars hiding inside.

Exp 11x2min (22min total)
ISO 1600

Landscape, North down in original image,
North up in final image.

Had difficulty focusing, finally obtained a good focus. Had tracking issues. Planned on 4 minute exposures had to settle for 2min. I had 12, 4 minute exposures that were unusable. Even at 2 minutes the tracking was a bit of an issue an had 2 unusable images (the ones I kept were not all that good but at this scale it is doesn't show much). Then the clouds came in and put a halt to everything.

4.25 inch f/3.9 (422mm fl) reflector
Field of view: 1.9 x 2.9 deg.
German Equatorial Mount (Super Polaris model)

Camera - Modified Canon Rebel XT (350D) (8 mega pixel) (modified by Hap Griffin)
with Orion Broadband Light Pollution Filter
with Baader Coma Corrector (MPCC)

Temperature - 6 degree F with 5-10mph wind
Transparency 20.2 mag/arc sec at the Rosette, 20.45 at zenith (Sky Quality Meter)
Seeing 7 (1-10)

Stacking - Registax 5
Noise Reduction - Noise Ninja 2
Other - Picture Window Pro 5

Stacked in Registax with dark frame (from 7 images) and Flat Field (from 30 images). Histogram Stretch using color curves in Picture Window (for adjusting the histogram of the red, green and blue separately within one function). Noise reduction with Noise Ninja. Another Histogram Stretch (color curves). Unsharp Mask (sharpening) with Picture
Window. Another Histogram Stretch (color curves). Cropped the sides off. Rotated for north up.

Rosette Neb_11x2min_2010-02-06_4in-f4_hist_NR_hist_unshp-hist-crop-rotated-(medium).jpg