The Rosette Nebula is a star-forming region about 5,000 light years from Earth within the Milky Way...just a bit to the left of the Orion constellation in the night sky. This cloud of gas and dust is responsible for the creation of about 2,500 young stars including the cluster of massive stars near the center of the image.

The final image is a result of hundreds of images taken between December 2023 and February 2024, and is a composite of more than 14 hours of exposure time blended into the single image. If you're wondering why 14 hours of exposure time is needed, these distant targets are so faint that it takes a lot of time to gather enough light on the image sensor for the object to start to become visible. For comparison, I've added a 2nd image showing what a single 3-minute exposure looks like. It took 280 of these 3-minute exposures stacked together and post-processed to create the final image.