NGC 2264 - Fox Fur Nebula / Christmas Tree Cluster (nerdybeardo)

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 · PK201+02.1 · Sh2-273 · The star 15Mon

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NGC 2264 - Fox Fur Nebula / Christmas Tree Cluster

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NGC 2264 - Fox Fur Nebula / Christmas Tree Cluster

This region goes by many names, the Cone nebula, the Christmas Tree cluster, the Fox Fur nebula (my personal favorite). It is in the Monoceros (the unicorn) constellation, this is a region I've never imaged but I really wanted to this year for some reason. I had to process it twice because the first time around for some reason only half of the data was used in the stack. It was imaged through clouds, frustrating mount problems, camera problems, takes and re-takes... process and re-process. I sank so much time into this and my other target I lost track... I think this one image started way back in early December late November and to be honest I have no idea when it all started... but here is the end result.

This image taught me what it takes to be successful, because I should have given up on it... it took so much time and effort I wasn't sure anything was going to come out of it. And all my "backup" images didn't materialize... in the end I was left with only one option, one image... this one.... and so I had to commit fully to finishing it. And it made me see that as I looked at things outside of astrophotography and the people who were able to achieve impossible things, it was because they had no backup plan... there was only one option.

While it sounds silly, if you think about the reasons for this it's because you look at the problems in front of you differently when you have no other option. With a fallback plan, you're always thinking "well if this fails it's ok"... but when you only have only one option, you know you have to fix the problems in front of you, you know that you have to keep things going... and that mindset makes all the difference.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5472879
PixInsight job	Y7PU9IGRYWZ7SC0AMGV05KOILDYA0X0W
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	06h39m47s.10
RA (top/left)	06h43m23s.53
RA (top/right)	06h44m02s.14
RA (bottom/right)	06h36m08s.87
RA (bottom/left)	06h35m34s.22

Dec (center)	+10°07′51″.8
Dec (top/left)	+08°47′38″.8
Dec (top/right)	+11°21′23″.8
Dec (bottom/right)	+11°28′10″.9
Dec (bottom/left)	+08°54′13″.0

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NGC 2264 - Fox Fur Nebula / Christmas Tree Cluster

NGC 2264 - Fox Fur Nebula / Christmas Tree Cluster

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NGC 2264 - Fox Fur Nebula / Christmas Tree Cluster

NGC 2264 - Fox Fur Nebula / Christmas Tree Cluster

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