April flowers shine in space in this stunning image of the Rosette Nebula.
Astrophotographer Miguel Claro took this image from the Dark Sky Reserve located in Portugal.
The Rosette Nebula is so named because its clouds of gas and dusts resemble the petals of a rose. The nebula is about 5,000 light years away at the edge of the molecular cloud Monoceros, or the Unicorn constellation. The nebula is a region of the Milky Way filled with glowing gas and a central cluster of hot, young stars that are only a few million years old. [50 Fabulous Deep-Space Nebulas (Gallery)]
Claro says he took some extra time to process the image.
“I have carefully processed the core of the nebula and stars, because in that cavity, we have a lot of details and different colors besides the reddish tone from H-alfa that we normally see,” Claro wrote in an email to Space.com.
His photo settings included a Taka FSQ-106ED + Extender-Q 1.6x with an EM200 auto-guider Nikon D810A at ISO2500 and an exposure of 300 seconds x 26 lights.
You can see more amazing night sky photos by our readers in our astrophotography archive here.
Editor’s note: If you have an amazing night sky photo you’d like to share with us and our news partners for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at email@example.com.