I live deep inside a Bortle 9 White Zone light pollution area in Miami-Dade County. To say that observing and imaging is difficult is a gross understatement. Recently, I wanted to image something other than the Orion Nebula, so I tried going for the Rosette Nebula. My first challenge was finding it! Using a scope to search the area is laughable. What I ended up doing was shooting images of the area until I finally found what I believed to be the cluster inside the Rosette. Not simple images, multiple images that I stacked to bring out some detail.


Targeting location of the nebula

Using this widefield image I spotted what I thought may be the core stars of the Rosette, which I circled. Then, I drew a line between Procyon and Bellatrix. Looking at this image, I aimed my green laser at the blank area of the sky and started shooting frames. When I processed all the data I could see a very slight hint of the nebula. I found it!!!

I set up my DSLR on the 60mm scope, aimed the green laser at the blank sky, and started taking test images. When ready, I started taking lights, darks and bias frames. My heart sunk when I looked at the output file of the stacked images - NO NEBULA. So, I started playing with it in GIMP and finally brought out the nebula.

I tried shooting short subs, long subs, ISO 800 to ISO 6400, etc. This is the best image I came up with, using my AT60ED:


My best Rosette image

I tried last night using my DSLR with a 55mm lens, thinking a wide field may give me better results:


Widefield attempt

That's the nebula, center left. Not exactly stellar results. The reason the images are red is because I use a Hydrogen Alpha filter that blocks out all light except 656nm with a narrow bandwidth.

I'm not exactly a beginner imager, but my locale does have limitations. I'm happy I got at least one, almost passable image of the Rosette. I didn't desaturate it (B&W) because it loses a lot. Hey, red is kind'a cool.

I had to try, but, as Dirty Harry once said:



It's the dry season down here and I'm going to take advantage of it. I may do one or two more Orion Nebula images, then move on to star clusters and other brighter objects I can have success with.

Ed D