What more can you ask for in the constellation of Monoceros, blue reflection nebulae, dark nebulae, and even red emission nebulae although I did not capture much of that. All of this setting in right in the middle of much more popular objects such as the the Cone Nebula and Rosette Nebula which is why it is not frequently imaged. I was quite pleased with the detail in the blue reflection nebulae especially the smaller ones on the top portion and the gold tones in the background.
Apparently the largest blue reflection nebula was discovered twice, hence the two designations IC 447 and IC 2169. The same can be said of the nearby reflection nebula IC 446/2167 located a half degree north of it. The dark nebula LDN 1607 sits between them. Just southeast of IC 446/2167 puts you at the small reflection nebula vdB 79 and going further east gets you to a larger and more detailed reflection nebula, NGC 2247. Finally, just south of that takes you to one of my favorite parts, the reflection nebula NGC 2245. The swirling gas and dust makes a nice companion to the nearby yellow star. All of the gas and dust in this region is believed to be connected to the Cone Nebula and Christmas Tree Nebula which would make it approximately 2700 light-years away.
For this object I captured approximately four hours of luminosity (no-filter) two hours of each RGB channel for a total of ten hours with my trusty ASI1600. Although I did seem to capture the red Ha-regions which would be on the east side I really like how it turned out - perhaps if I were in a Bortle 3 area and/or used an Ha filter I would have picked it up. The starfield in this region is exceptionally colorful. I did my new trick of only using the RGB stars and blending them into the LRGB starless image using StarXterminator and PixelMath.
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