NGC 2244, Open cluster in the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237), LRGB

NGC 2244 is an open cluster in the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237), located in the constellation Monoceros. The hot O type stars in the cluster create a strong solar wind pushing out on the Rosette Nebula, giving the Rosette Nebula its characteristic doughnut shape.

The Rosette Nebula, NGC 2237, is an emission nebula composed of hydrogen. Radiation from the hot O type stars excites the hydrogen gas causing it to glow.

This image is an LRGB image. It is derived from two images. The first is a grayscale luminance image. It provides brightness values for each pixel in the image. The second image is a color RGB image. For the image above, the final image, the brightness of each pixel is determined by the luminance image. The color for each pixel is determined by the color RGB image.

The color image contains both the hydrogen alpha, 656.28 nm (red) and hydrogen beta 486.1 nm (blue) contribution. Therefore the emission nebula appears more magenta compared to the first image in the sequence.

Image processed by Andrew Macica, original data from Telescope Live.

Imaging Details:

Observatory: IC Astronomy Observatory, Oria, Almería, Spain

Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106EDX4

Aperture: 106 mm, w/ 0.73x focal reducer, f/3.6

Focal Length: 382 mm

Camera: QHY 600M Pro CMOS

Filters: LRGB

Total Exposure: 10 hours 0 minutes

Image Processing:

PixInsight 1.8.9-3 Ripley (x64);

BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, StarXTerminator (RC Astro);

Adobe Photoshop 25.12.4;

Adobe Lightroom Classic 15.0.1

Instruction on PixInsight from Adam Block Studios.