My latest take on the cone nebula and Christmas tree cluster in SHO Hubble palette. This was using my QHY268M and is a two panel mosaic. The Christmas Tree Cluster is a young open cluster located in the constellation Monoceros. It is part of the star-forming region NGC 2264, which also contains the Cone Nebula, the Fox Fur Nebula, and the Snowflake Cluster. The Christmas Tree Cluster lies at an approximate distance of 2,350 light-years and stretches about 30 light-years across. It is a member of the Monoceros OB1 association, a loose association of very young stars located in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. The stars in the cluster formed within the emission nebula NGC 2264. They are still heavily obscured by the thick dust clouds that keep producing new stars. The ultraviolet light of the luminous young stars ionizes the surrounding clouds and makes them glow red in long-exposure images.
 The Christmas Tree Cluster was named for its triangular shape, formed by a cluster of very young stars, that looks like a tree in visible light. It is located in the northern part of NGC 2264, just above the Cone Nebula. The seventh magnitude member HD 47887 sits just above the tip of the Cone, while the bright variable star S Monocerotis (15 Monocerotis) lies slightly to the north and marks the trunk of the Christmas tree. The apex of the tree is located next to the Cone Nebula. HD 47887 is a young stellar object with the spectrum of a luminous blue giant (B2III). The star has an estimated temperature of 19,918.2 K based on the data obtained from the Gaia Data Release 3 (GDR3). It lies 2,504 light-years (767.9 parsecs) away. S Monocerotis, which lies at the base of the cluster, is the brightest star in NGC 2264. It has an apparent magnitude of 4.66 and is visible to the unaided eye on a clear, dark night. The star is classified as an irregular variable. Its brightness varies from magnitude 4.62 to 4.68. The binary star S Monocerotis A consists of two massive, luminous O-type main sequence stars with masses 29.1 and 21.3 times that of the Sun. The more massive component is 214,000 times more luminous than the Sun and spins at 120 km/s. The two stars have an orbital period of about 108 years and are separated by 112.5 milliarcseconds. They lie 2,348 light-years away.  The stars in the Christmas Tree Cluster formed very recently from the surrounding molecular cloud. The cluster contains more than 600 members that are 1 to 4 million years old, including several dozen OB stars and more than 400 lower mass members. The Christmas Tree Cluster was discovered by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel on January 18, 1784. Herschel catalogued the cluster as H VIII.5. He did not discover the surrounding nebulosity until December 26, 1785, when he noticed “faint nebulosity near the cluster’s brightest star.” The Christmas Tree Cluster is catalogued as Collinder 112 in Swedish astronomer Per Collinder’s 1931 catalogue of open clusters.