The Rosette Nebula (aka Caldwell 49) is a HII region located in Monoceros, the Unicorn. The open cluster NGC 2244 (aka Caldwell 50) is closely associated with the nebulosity, the stars of the cluster having been formed from the nebula’s matter. In the color image the diffraction spikes of the stars of the cluster create an intricate set of hexagonal pattern.
For this dataset I focused on the molecular cloud globules eroding the Rosette nebula, as I like dark structures. I wanted to go deep, and acquired over 30 hours . After a stringent selection, 27 hours of high quality color and narrow band data remains. Of course I could have gone deeper, particularly in SII, or created a mosaic, but at some point I had to call it a day.
Here, here and here are high quality processing of this dataset.