NGC 2264 - Cone and Fox Fur Nebulae, and the Christmas Tree Cluster (Doug Gray)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Monoceros (Mon) · Contains: 15 S Mon · B39 · Christmas Tree Cluster · LBN 899 · LBN 902 · LBN 911 · LBN 912 · LBN 922 · LDN 1609 · LDN 1610 · LDN 1613 · NGC 2259 · NGC 2264 · Sh2-273 · The star 15Mon

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NGC 2264 - Cone and Fox Fur Nebulae, and the Christmas Tree Cluster

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NGC 2264 - Cone and Fox Fur Nebulae, and the Christmas Tree Cluster

This was a very fun target to shoot and edit, as there is so much signal in this region of space in both Ha and SII. I wish I had a reducer for a wider field of view. The Cone Nebula is the brightest DSO at the bottom of the image, a dark cone shaped pillar at the top of the Christmas tree shaped nebula that gives the overlapping open cluster its name. The texture of the tree is often referred to as the Fox Fur nebula. I think it's beautiful, but I don't see the resemblance.

Standard SHO palette. After stacking the OIII & SII channels were still a little noisy, but Ha was very smooth, so I did not need to do much post processing (no gradient removal). I used StarNet++ to separate the stars, but have not shot RGB stars (yet). I found there was a lot of halo artifacts around where the removed stars were, so I spent quite a bit of time with the spot healing brush trying to remove them while maintaining the appearance of noise.

The hardest post-processing decision was what orientation to present these targets. I originally wanted to show the Christmas tree upright, but think it looks better with the gas appearing to rise from the cone nebula.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4253340
PixInsight job	9C7YIALH743QLRGK724OW4K8JOYNG1A9
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	06h39m36s.78
RA (top/left)	06h35m37s.17
RA (top/right)	06h43m17s.10
RA (bottom/right)	06h43m34s.38
RA (bottom/left)	06h35m58s.62

Dec (center)	+10°16′31″.10
Dec (top/left)	+11°37′50″.4
Dec (top/right)	+11°41′07″.8
Dec (bottom/right)	+08°54′58″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	+08°51′46″.10

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NGC 2264 - Cone and Fox Fur Nebulae, and the Christmas Tree Cluster

NGC 2264 - Cone and Fox Fur Nebulae, and the Christmas Tree Cluster

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NGC 2264 - Cone and Fox Fur Nebulae, and the Christmas Tree Cluster

NGC 2264 - Cone and Fox Fur Nebulae, and the Christmas Tree Cluster

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