Photo of the Week for April 7, 2017

One of the winter sky’s most photographed objects is the Rosette Nebula, situated east of Orion in the dim constellation Monoceros. Usually the Rosette is presented in colour, but this photo by Nepean, Ontario, imager Oleg Bouevitch takes a different approach. Oleg’s monochromatic image allows us to notice features that are often overwhelmed by vivid hues. Another advantage is that it better approximates the experience of viewing the nebula in a telescope. Even with large-aperture instruments, we’re unable to perceive colour in all but a small handful of very bright deep-sky objects.

For this Rosette portrait Oleg used a Takahashi FSQ-106EDX III f/5 astrographic telescope and Atik 383L+ CCD camera to acquire a total of 140 minutes imaging data shot through a 3nm hydrogen-alpha Astrodon narrowband filter.