APOD: The Rosette Nebula in Hydrogen and... (2015 Feb 25)

[APOD Robot]

The Rosette Nebula in Hydrogen and Oxygen

Explanation: The Rosette Nebula is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers -- but it is the most famous. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros, some 5,000 light years away, the petals of this rose are actually a stellar nursery whose lovely, symmetric shape is sculpted by the winds and radiation from its central cluster of hot young stars. The stars in the energetic cluster, cataloged as NGC 2244, are only a few million years old, while the central cavity in the Rosette Nebula, cataloged as NGC 2237, is about 50 light-years in diameter. The nebula can be seen firsthand with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

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[paulobao]

Hi all,

When I saw it I went to my calendar....no, it is not the first of April!

Cheers,
paulo

[Sternfreund]

The APOD version of my Rosette Nebula was a while ago before i acquired new data.
Do not forget, it's all done (especially the narrowband) just with DSLR's (Eos450Da).
here is the final version:



Cheers

Arno

[paulobao]

Much better!
But the one that won (sorry to say) it is not in the same league! And I saw the first one as an APOD (despite it is a DSLR or not)!
Anyway, congratulations for the APOD.

Cheers,
paulo

[Ann]

The APOD version of my Rosette Nebula was a while ago before i acquired new data.
Do not forget, it's all done (especially the narrowband) just with DSLR's (Eos450Da).
here is the final version:



Cheers

Arno

It's always nice when someone whose picture has become an APOD turns up here at Starship Asterisk* and comments on their own picture. Good to hear from you, Arno! And congratulations on your APOD.

Ann

[Visual_Astronomer]

The APOD version of my Rosette Nebula was a while ago before i acquired new data.
Do not forget, it's all done (especially the narrowband) just with DSLR's (Eos450Da).
here is the final version:



Cheers

Arno

Nice picture, but I encourage everyone to look at your final version - it is magnificent!

The Rosette is a favorite target of mine. It is large - twice the width of the full moon - and I can just make out some of the dark filimentary structures shown in the photos.

[Sternfreund]

Thanks all!

I'm pretty satisfied with my final Version.
The last halpha data was rly awsome because i acquired it in the absence of the Moon.

The halpha data for the apod version was acquired one year before in february 2014 with a moonphase of 99%.

Altough narrowband with DSLR is pretty hard and needs a lot of exposure time.

Next week i become 30 years old. My wish for birthday present is a monochrome moravian ccd camera.
Would make my life much more easy.
Lest see..

[Dad is watching]

As I understand it, oxygen was not made in the big bang, and that this is an area where gas/dust/oxygen is found in abundance over many light years. In sufficient quantities to collapse and form many stars and possibly more. Oxygen is made in exploding starts, as I understand it. So what went 'bang' and where is the remnant of the original body? Was it totally destroyed? How big was it?

[Ron-Astro Pharmacist]

As I understand it, oxygen was not made in the big bang, and that this is an area where gas/dust/oxygen is found in abundance over many light years. In sufficient quantities to collapse and form many stars and possibly more. Oxygen is made in exploding starts, as I understand it. So what went 'bang' and where is the remnant of the original body? Was it totally destroyed? How big was it?

This may not be exactly the correct resource to answer your question but it did discuss the Big Bang and how it essentially is all around us in most every respect. As to what went "bang" – that is something many of us love to wonder about.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/bi ... chine.html

[bystander]

I think the question was what went bang in the Rosette to create all the oxygen.

[Ann]

As I understand it, oxygen was not made in the big bang, and that this is an area where gas/dust/oxygen is found in abundance over many light years. In sufficient quantities to collapse and form many stars and possibly more. Oxygen is made in exploding starts, as I understand it. So what went 'bang' and where is the remnant of the original body? Was it totally destroyed? How big was it?

It seems pretty certain that there has not been a supernova in the Rosette Nebula. You are correct that oxygen is often created in supernovas, but you must remember that the universe is almost fourteen billion years old, and supernovas have been going off for most of that time. That means that oxygen has been continually created for as long as there have been core-collapse supernovas, and the hydrogen gas that is found in our galaxy is mixed with certain amounts of oxygen. And it also means that the oxygen that is ionized in the Rosette Nebula wasn't created there, and it is indeed just being ionized there.

The reason why we can see the oxygen in the Rosette Nebula is twofold. First, the oxygen that is there close to the hot stars has been ionized due to the high levels of ultraviolet light close to the stars, and when the oxygen has been ionized it emits light. Second, this picture has been made with a filter that isolates emission from ionized oxygen, and this filter makes the light from the ionized oxygen in the Rosette Nebula much more visible than it would otherwise have been.

Ann

[saturno2]

I like the final version

[BDanielMayfield]

As I understand it, oxygen was not made in the big bang, and that this is an area where gas/dust/oxygen is found in abundance over many light years. In sufficient quantities to collapse and form many stars and possibly more. Oxygen is made in exploding starts, as I understand it. So what went 'bang' and where is the remnant of the original body? Was it totally destroyed? How big was it?

It seems pretty certain that there has not been a supernova in the Rosette Nebula. You are correct that oxygen is often created in supernovas, but you must remember that the universe is almost fourteen billion years old, and supernovas have been going off for most of that time. That means that oxygen has been continually created for as long as there have been core-collapse supernovas, and the hydrogen gas that is found in our galaxy is mixed with certain amounts of oxygen. And it also means that the oxygen that is ionized in the Rosette Nebula wasn't created there, and it is indeed just being ionized there.

The reason why we can see the oxygen in the Rosette Nebula is twofold. First, the oxygen that is there close to the hot stars has been ionized due to the high levels of ultraviolet light close to the stars, and when the oxygen has been ionized it emits light. Second, this picture has been made with a filter that isolates emission from ionized oxygen, and this filter makes the light from the ionized oxygen in the Rosette Nebula much more visible than it would otherwise have been.

Ann

There are other reasons why oxygen is so noticeable in addition to the ones Ann mentioned. Oxygen is, after Hydrogen and Helium, the third most abundant element in the universe, so if one uses a filter that isolates for O to photograph the night sky in a place where the interstellar medium is energized by nearby bright stars it's very likely to be found. Also, O is not just produced in Supernovae; stars that are not massive enough to ever go SN are good producers of it too, and they're good at expelling it out into space as well. And since less massive stars are far more numerous than the ones that go SN, smaller stars might actually put out more O than SNs.

Bruce

[Dad is watching]

Thank you Ann & Bruce