Postcard from the Universe – The Rosette

A result from Saturday night. About an hour of integration all told… Good color, very nice stars, good detail. While encouraging, I really need more time on this one, there is too much noise in the fainter regions of the nebula. I can get more data and add it to the stack to continue to improve the result. From up on the mountain I should be able to use longer exposures with darker skies. Colder conditions will reduce the dark current in the camera, also aiding in longer exposures.

Compare the processed shot with the single subframe I published yesterday. The final shot is a stack of 10 x 4min, 10 x 1min, and 10 x 15s frames, 30 frames for just under an hour of exposure. Also needed is another 10 x 240s dark frames and 10 flat field frames to use for calibration. This takes another hour, but was done after the telescope was rolled back into the garage and I went to bed.

The Rosette Nebula is a large star forming region just east of Orion in the constellation of Monocerus. It is quite large, the main body seen in the photograph is well over a degree across. The dark region in the center is about the size of the Full Moon