Of Roses, Horns and Christmas Trees

The Rosette Nebula (C50) is a beautiful H-alpha nebula, located near the end of a giant molecular cloud in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way.

 

Due to it's beauty and relatively high apparent brightness, it is a very popular target for deep space imaging. Its photographic attractiveness probably is the reason, why its equally stunning surroundings are often overlooked.

 

At about 200mm focal length, the Rosette Nebula shares the field of view with the Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC2264) and the Cone Nebula, a cone shaped, cold hydrogen molecular cloud blocking the light of a faint emission nebula behind it. Both the Cone and Rosette Nebula are part of a giant star forming complex.

 

I captured this "deepscape" of the Rosette and Christmas Tree region of our sky setting behind this landmark peak, during my skiing vacation in Arosa, Switzerland. The foreground lighting comes from snowcats preparing the slopes for another day of perfect skiing.

 

Capturing such an alignment normally involves quite a bit of cross country hiking with a huge backpack full of equipment.

 

For this alignment however, I was very lucky. Our appartment was perfectly located for this image and I was able to capture this image from our balcony while sitting in the warm living room.

 

EXIF

Canon EOS 6D, astro-modified

ZWO ASI 1600MM Pro

Baader Ultra Narrowband H-alpha and Olll filters

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L ll @ 182mm, f/4

Equatorially mounted Skywatcher AZ-GTI mount

Sky:

RGBwith the EOS 6D:

50 x 60s @ ISO800

Narrowband data with ZWO ASI 1600MM Pro:

H-alpha: 20 x 300s

Oiii: 17 x 240s

Foreground:

Stack of 20 x 60s @ ISO800 with the EOS 6D

Done