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A Rose and a Cone in Monoceros

About this object

This image of the night sky is centered in the constellation Monoceros within the winter Milky Way and if your looking south from the northern hemisphere, just left of the constellation Orion and the bright orange star Betelgeuse. The wide field image contains the popular Rosette Nebula, also known as NGC 2237 and the Cone Nebula, NGC 2264. Also within this image are many other small objects that are hard to see, the reflection nebula IC2169, Hubble’s Variable Nebula, known as NGC 2261 and several star clusters, Sharpless objects and VdB reflection objects. To easily find them see this un-cropped annotated image. I took this image using a Astro Hutech modified Canon 6D DSLR which is more sensitive to red Ha emission than a non modified camera and also used a Astronomic XL CLS filter, which is essentially a light pollution filter but also significantly increases contrast. The image was taken at a focal length of 200mm and f5.6. Thirteen 3min exposures where tracked using the Astrotrac portable pier system mount and the image was calibrated and processed using PixInsight. I’ve also attached some larger images here 1920px wide and 2700px wide

Image Details

  • Optics : Canon 70-200 f4 L lens at 200mm f5.6
  • Mount: Astrotrac portable pier system
  • Camera: Canon 6D modified
  • Filters: Astronomic XL CLS filter
  • Exposure: (19) @3min
  • Camera/Mount Control: Interval timer
  • Guiding: Unguided
  • Processing: PixInsight 1.8,
  • Location: Star Dust Ranch, Okeechobee, FL
  • Date: January 2018
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