The Rosette Nebula

The beautiful and eloquent Rosette Nebula, an active star nursery whose clouds of sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen gas are shaped by the bright and highly radioactive infant stars towards the center of the nebula. This nebula is ~5,200 light years from Earth and stretches ~130 light years across. I originally captured these exposures in December 2021 from my backyard using a camera that shoots only in black and white, and I used filters one at a time that captured the wavelengths of light emitted by sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen and used software to assign those exposures to red, green, and blue respectively. This is a technique used by NASA for Hubble and James Webb images to help create more distinction between the gasses so that their interactions could be more easily studied to better understand how stars and galaxies form. As for me - well, they certainly make for breathtaking images!

Please note this image is heavily compressed for the website. You can view the full resolution JPEG file here: https://www.astrobin.com/ilhrcr/F/