I originally had planned to capture  IC 2169 focusing on the bright reflection nebula and surrounding dark nebula. As astrophotography goes, non forecasted clouds rolled in and I only had 2 horus worth of 3 min subs. I quick stacked the images and saw they were okay, but that in the upper right corner there was half large golden star cluster I had not seen in stelleaium. I did a little digging and found out it was Trumpler 5.  The next clear night, I centered by capture on NGC 2245 to capture both Trumpler 5 and another open Cluster NGC 2259.  The weather held out and I was pleased with the results. 

Then I looked more at the image and realized that it overlapped with my previous image of the Christmas Tree Nebula from Dec 2020.  I have only done a couple of mosaics to not much success, but I thought I would give it a try following Tim Hutchison tutorial for photometric mosaics. My new data was shot at 0 degree rotation and my old at 90 Rotation, but when stitched together the alignment allowed for the Christmas and Cone nebula to be well within the frame. I was delighted with the fact that the two panels game together, shot 2 years apart with different exposure times and  slightly differences in gain. Only 1 star had issues in the merger and the large diffraction spikes are not quite all parallel, but I will definitely take some minor imperfections. 

I really enjoy the image as it contains great examples of many types of astrophotography targets: Hydrogen emission nebulae, bright open clusters, reflection nebulae, dark and dusty nebulae, along with regions of new star formation. 

There is quite a lot going on in the left portion of the image. If rotated counter clockwise 90 degrees,  I find that IC 2169 really looks like a city toy city snow globe. 

IC 2169 reflection nebula is located in Monoceros approximately 2500 light years occupying 20 x 25 arc seconds. This would correspond to 18 x1.5 light years for the bright reflection nebula. The RASA8 really brought out some of the non reflective dust object and a fair amount of detail compared to other images I had see of this object.  A significantly cropped version of the area can be seen here below and is quite amazing at full resolution. 

IC 2169, NGC 2245, and Friends OSC RASA8 Close Up

NGC 2245 and IC 2167 appear to be smaller versions of M78  that I shot recently with  young bright  reflection nebula with dark dust lines obscuring. These are thought to be similar distance form earth and measure 4.5 light years by my basic calculations. Below and to the left there also appears to be a young stellar nurse forming new proto stars similar to the bottom half of NGC 1333 Embryo nebula. 

NGC 2247 is also a neat small reflection nebula below NCG 2245 without as much detail. 

Trumpler 5 in the top center of theimage, originally was discovered by Robert Trumpler (Swiss American Astronomer) in the 1930s. It  is a  quite large open cluster that is thought to be 125 million years old. It is estimated to be 7800 light years from earth and 1300 light years above the galactic plane.  The large nature provided more gravitational bounding of the original stars. I find this cluster interesting because  of the it golden hue pops out from the fairly dense star field. 


Finally, the right portion of the image contains the Christmas Tree nebula along with the cone nebula, snow flake cluster, and fox fur are part of the NGC 2264 group. Located approximately 2,600 light years in the constellation of Monoceros. The nebula is predominantly a hydrogen emission type surrounding young open clusters of stars and new born proto-stars.