Here’s my latest astrophotography project, the Rosette Nebula. The clouds haven’t been kind lately and it’s getting late in nebula season to image the Rosette, so I had to scrape together what time I could on it. I gathered 12.2 hours of data over 5 nights for this. After rejecting images with high thin clouds in them, I kept 10.5 hours of data for the final image.

The Rosette Nebula is about 67 light years across and 5200 light years away. If you could see it with your naked eye (it’s too dim, so you can’t), it would be a little bigger than twice the diameter of the moon. Through lots of astronomy gear and long exposure images, I think it’s a gorgeous sight.

You can view the Lightbucket imaging log here: https://app.lightbucket.co/astronomers/grouchoduke/targets/fd694b5a-f6ef-4333-84db-7fe6740559bd

You can see the full sized image here: http://astronomynightly.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Rosette_v1.jpg

Details:

• Explore Scientific ED127 refractor
• Hotech SCA flattener
• Player One Astronomy Poseidon-C camera
• L-eXtreme Ha/OIII filter
• Losmandy G11 mount
• BoldMFG Pier
• 12.5 hours of data (146x 300second sub-exposures taken, 127 subs used)
• Imaged from my Bortle 5 back yard
• Captured in NINA
• Processed in Siril, GraXpert, Seti Astro Suite, Photoshop & NXT