Rosette Nebula in Narrowband Light

These images were taken with filters having extremely narrow bandwidths, to capture only the light emitted by certain gasses when excited by stellar radiation. The huge Rosette Nebula (NGC2244) is located in the constellation Monoceros, and measures about 90 to 100 light years across (540 trillion to 600 trillion miles). It is estimated to contain hydrogen gas about 10,000 times the mass of our sun, and lies about 5,000 light years away (30 quadrillion miles). In the center of the nebula, young stars are forming from the gas cloud. Intense radiation from these stars excites the gas, causing it to glow brightly.

Rosette Mosaic

The Rosette is too large to fit completely on my camera's chip, so I exposed half of it at a time and stitched the frames together. The four images below represent 26½ hours total exposure collected over 13 nights in January, February, and March 2008 at various camera temperatures and exposure times. This table lists the exposure for each narrowband channel. For variety, each image uses a different palette to represent three gases present in the nebula. Scroll down to see them all.

(Hubble)   Red: Sulfur-II     Green: Hydrogen-alpha     Blue: Oxygen-III

This image uses the same color palette as the Hubble Space telescope. Ionized sulfur is red, hydrogen is green, and oxygen is blue. Click here for a full-size version.

Along the Rosette's northern arc (top), two cloud tendrils spiral together in a "Y" shape. You can see a closer view of this feature here. Other dark clouds and tendrils can be found in the nebula's western region (right), and here is a closer view of that area. The southeast region contains several "elephant trunks," which are pillars of dense gas; the gas is condensing inside these pillars to form new stars. You can see details here.