A nice photographic target in the winter sky is the Rosette Nebula in the constellation Unicorn. The cosmic cloud of gas is excited to glow by the open star cluster in the center. The area can be called a “cosmic kindergarten”, because the bright and hot stars in the center are only a few million years old – so in cosmic dimensions still very, very young. The nebula is designated under different catalog numbers: NGC 2244 designates the central cluster, while the nebular structures are designated NGC 2237. The view through a telescope usually shows only the star cluster, the nebular structures become only photographically very nicely recognizable. The image was taken in January 2020 with a 20 centimeter Newtonian telescope and a CCD color camera. For this purpose, light was captured through the camera for ten times six and twelve times seven minutes and then processed on the computer.
Image and text: Frank Bohlscheid
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