I imaged this huge emission nebula, the Rosette nebula - a skull in space that sits around 5200 light years away but still within our Milkyway galaxy. I imaged it using my dedicated OSC (one shot colour) astronomy camera, my HEQ5Pro equatorial mount and my Skywatcher 200P telescope.
Total Integration time: 6 hours 75 mins
Moon coverage: 25%
Location: Monoceros Region of our night sky
Bortle: 4
The Rosette Nebula is a huge star-forming region spanning 100 light years across and located 5,000 lightyears away from us. It can be seen in the Monoceros constellation in the winter months, located between stars Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion and Procyon in Canis Minor.
Some people think, me included, that this star forming region of space looks like a skull and I definitely think so too.
This time I decided to go for a sligthly more vibrant version of Rosette nebula and bring out some of the colours you might not see processed into this particular deep sky object. This time I was also able to image and process a vey special object called a Herbig-Haro object.
Meaburn and Walsh reported in 1986 that an ionised trail in the Rosette Nebula has a velocity contour that shows a dramatic tilt. A 2010 study suggested that the Rosette Nebula contains an HH jet with a source 30′′ NW of the jet. I have highlighted this object in my zoomed in image below. It clealry show the ionised tail behind the star.
HH objects are bright patches of gas that form when a newborn star ejects jets of gas that collide with nearby gas and dust clouds. They are transient and usually last for a few tens of thousands of years. HH objects are often found in star-forming regions and can be aligned with a star's rotational axis. The brightest HH objects are usually found at the ends of the jet, where the material collides with the surrounding molecular cloud. Sources:Wikipedia/NASA
I hope you enjoy finding out more about the Rosette nebula and Herbig-Haro objects.
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