A show piece nebula in Monoceros, just east of Orion. Includes the open cluster NCG 2244. Taken on a nearly perfect night. A little gusty wind but the sky was very good. It has been a long time since I've had as good of a night as this. Reasonable tempuratures, nice clear sky, good seeing and my equipment and I all worked as planned! This was the first light with the new William Optics Flattener IV. It has built in adjustement for the distance of the lens to the imaging chip. Turns out I have a little adjustment left to do, but as is the flattener makes a big improvement and it produces a very sharp image.

The cluster and nebula lie at a distance of some 5,200 light years from Earth (although estimates of the distance vary considerably) and measure roughly 130 light years in diameter. The radiation from the young stars excite the atoms in the nebula, causing them to emit radiation themselves producing the emission nebula we see. The mass of the nebula is estimated to be around 10,000 solar masses.

It is believed that stellar winds from a group of O and B stars are exerting pressure on interstellar clouds to cause compression, followed by star formation in the nebula. This star formation is currently still ongoing. (wikipedia)

Photo Details:

Taken March 5, 2010
West of Columbia, MO
Temp: 35 Deg. F
Exposures: 16 x 360 seconds @ ISO800
Camera: Canon Rebel 350 Modified by Hap Griffin
Telescope: William Optics FLT 110 Lite with W/O Flattener IV system @f5.6
Mount: Celestron CGE
Guiding: PHD Guide with a Meade DSI Pro through a W/O 80mm fluorite doublet
Calibrated with Darks, Flats and Bias frames and stacked with Deep Sky Stacker
Post Process in Photoshop CS3, Noise Ninja, GradientXTerminator, Noel Carboni's Tools