Photograph of Rosette A, a nebula in Monoceros.

Rosette A

NEBULANebula
[

OVERVIEW

] NEBULA

Rosette A is a nebula in the constellation Monoceros. It is catalogued as C 0627+050 and NGC 2237.

A ring of glowing hydrogen several dozen light-years across, hollowed out from within by the winds of the young cluster at its centre.

WHAT IT IS
Nebula
HOW BIG ON THE SKY
1.33

About 2.6 full Moons wide.

WHERE TO LOOK
Monoceros

The patch of sky it sits in, as seen from Earth.

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IMAGES

] 2 FRAMES
[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see Rosette A for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.

TONIGHT

Say where you are, and this line says when Rosette A is worth going out for.

[

THROUGH AN EYEPIECE

] 150 MM TELESCOPE · 25 MM EYEPIECE
NE
FIELD 1.08°

Rosette A covers 1.33° of sky against a of 1.08°, so at 48× it is wider than the field — sweep across it.

48×
1.08
1.25
13.0
SIZE ON THE SKY
1.33
FILLS OF THE FIELD
more than 100% of the width

Rosette A is not a point of light, so the limit above is the wrong one to hold it against: the same brightness spread over 1.33° of sky is harder than a star of it, and goes first. Catalogued sizes are measured to a photographic contour, and the part an eye sees is usually smaller.

FIND IT ON THE SKY MAP ↗
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APPARENT PLACE

] EQUINOX J2026.7

Where a telescope has to be pointed today, which is not quite where the catalogue records the object: the coordinate grid itself has turned since the year 2000 the catalogue is referred to.

RIGHT ASCENSION
DECLINATION
GRID TURNED SINCE
21.4
PROPER MOTION SINCE
none published

Computed for 2026-08-27 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for Rosette A, so nothing here moves the object; what separates this from the catalogued position above is the coordinate grid turning under it — about fifty arcseconds a year of precession since 2000, and the small nodding of the Earth’s axis on top of that. Aberration and refraction are not included, and neither is parallax; each is under an arcminute, which is also about as well as the catalogued position is known. The same figure for any date.

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CATALOG DATA

] 7 FIELDS

The raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.

WHERE IT IS AND HOW IT MOVES

Position, motion across the sky and the size it covers on it. These are measurements of the object as seen from here, so every one of them depends on where here is.

Radial velocity
38
Redshift (z)
Major axis
80
Minor axis
50

OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS

The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.

OpenNGC type code
Neb
Wikidata item
Q18088385
Wikipedia article
NGC 2237
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ALSO KNOWN AS

] 3 DESIGNATIONS
  • Common name Rosette A
  • IAU cluster C 0627+050
  • NGC NGC 2237
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LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE

] 3 SERVICES

Each link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.

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CITE THIS PAGE

] DR1

This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.

PLAIN TEXT
SpaceCatalog. Rosette A [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/ngc-2237
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_ngc-2237,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{Rosette A}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/ngc-2237},
  note         = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from OpenNGC.}
}

The values above were taken from OpenNGC — CC-BY-SA-4.0. Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue, and its licence is share-alike: the terms reach whatever you build from these rows.

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RELATED OBJECTS

] 8 LINKED