Photo of the Week for November 3, 2017
Every season features a handful of showcase deep-sky targets popular with astrophotographers. The Rosette Nebula (catalogued collectively as NGC 2237-8/46) in the dim constellation Monoceros, just east of Orion, is one such object. And here’s our first Rosette photo of the 2017/18 winter season. The reason it’s such a popular subject is obvious—the wreath-like nebulosity is visually striking, and the cluster embedded within (NGC2244) gives the scene extra sparkle.
This Rosette portrait was captured by Stan Noble under a dark rural sky near Aneroid, Saskatchewan, roughly 70 kilometres south-southeast of Swift Current. Stan used a QHY163C CMOS camera and an Altair Lightwave 66mm refractor telescope fitted with a matching 0.8× focal reducer (producing an f-ratio of f/4.8) to record the 90, 75-second frames combined to make this picture.
