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Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of the this flowery emission nebula. Inside the nebula lies an open cluster of bright young stars designated NGC 2244. These stars formed about four million years ago from the nebular material and their stellar winds are clearing a hole in the nebula's center, insulated by a layer of dust and hot gas. Ultraviolet light from the hot cluster stars causes the surrounding nebula to glow. The Rosette Nebula spans about 100 light-years across, lies about 5000 light-years away, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of Monoceros.
(Text from Astronomy Picture of the Day)

Remarkable features Click the image to view and interact with the hi-res image. NGC2244 is an open cluster in the center of the Rosette Nebula, 24 arcminutes large, has a magnitude of 4.8. 12 Mon is a bright and red star, has a visual magnitude of 5.84 (barely visible at the naked eye from a dark location) Plaskett's Star is the most massive binary yet discovered: the primary has a mass of about forty suns, the companion about sixty suns. OCL518 is a large open stars cluster, 30 arcminutes large and visual magnitude 5.40. LBN951, LBN943 and LBN 941 are faint HII nebulae. OCL506 is a large and bright open cluster, its size is 25 arcminutes, has a magnitude of 5.40. OCL510 is a large and bright open cluster containing about 20 stars, its size is 35 arcminutes, has a magnitude of 4.60.   Find Chart The position of the Rosette Nebula (in the red circle) in Monoceros constellation. Image from Cartes du Ciel.

In order to produce the color image seen here, I worked with data coming from 5 different photographic plates taken at Palomar Observatory between 1953 (!) and 1998. The original uncropped file is 11,760x11,328 pixels with a resolution of about 1 arcsec per pixel. The image show an area of sky large 3.3° x 3.1° (for comparison, the full-Moon is about 0.5° in diameter).
A larger field-of-view image is also available (click here for a preview), its size is 18,019x16,758. It show an area of sky large 5.0° x 4.7°.
Copyright: Davide De Martin (http://www.skyfactory.org).

Other images of the same celestial field found online

• http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/RosetteHAcolorS.html by Robert Gendler;
• http://lefevre.darkhorizons.org/ccdimaging/rosemosaic.htm by Paul LeFevre.

This image is a composite from black and white images taken with the Palomar Observatory's 48-inch (1.2-meter) Samuel Oschin Telescope as a part of the second National Geographic Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS II). The images were recorded on two type of glass photographic plates - one sensitive to red light and the other to blue light and later they were digitized. Credit: Caltech, Palomar Observatory, Digitized Sky Survey.