This is a wide field of NGC2264, the Cone Nebula, located in Monoceros, just a few degrees apart from another photogenic target, the Rosette Nebula. I had the opportunity to image this part of the sky by visiting family and friends near Sion, in the swiss Alps (my beloved childhood’s region). The night was damn cold (-10°C) and the sky cloudless and very transparent. Unfortunately, the seeing wasn’t good as expected while setting up the gear I took with me : stars were visually “wobbling”, even at zenith. I also mounted the CLS filter into my Canon 600Da to cut street lights around the house (there are still plenty of hideous two-globes street lamps from the 80’s…it’s hopeless!).

But finally everything worked pretty good and I’m happy to break my integration record on this image, reaching an satisfying total of 3 hours and 34 minutes!

So, this is my small contribution to this famous area. Standing next to the Cone are the Christmas Tree Cluster, dominated by star 15 Mon, or S Mon, a binary system of two hot stars in a 25-year orbit; the Fox Fur Nebula embedded in the tree’s branches; and a few NGC’s, mostly open clusters or bright nebulas. The Hubble’s Variable Nebula is recognizable as a comet-like patch. Just 1° on the left of the Christmas Tree is Trumpler 5, an 10th magnitude open cluster with yellow-orange stars located about 9’000 l-y away, while the Tree lies just 2’600 l-y from us. This nice family portrait is surrounding by LBN 922, easily seen here on top of the image. In NGC 2264, the reddish regions are generated by hydrogen gas that has been stimulated to emit its own light by the UV radiation coming from the hot, blue stars of the cluster. The blue areas are mainly dust clouds that reflect the bluish light of the same stars.

I kept 107 light frames und used darks, bias and flats freshly made with a new accessory: LED-flatfield box from Lacerta. Small investment for great result! Stacked in DSS, processed in PI and cosmetically cleaned in PS, as usual. But this time, I tried a new LRGB process for stretching this image after reading some very good tutorials found on the Web. I don’t really know if using this separation workflow improve my image but I’m very happy with such kind of process that didn’t cost to much time and effort to achieve in PI.

Please enjoy and feel free to comment, critic and suggest any bettering I should pay attention to. Encouraging words are also very welcome ;-)

Clear sky to all Astrobin friends!