Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Monoceros (Mon)  ·  Contains:  15 S Mon  ·  Christmas Tree Cluster  ·  NGC 2264  ·  Sh2-273  ·  The star 15Mon

Image of the day 02/20/2020

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    Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), Gary Lopez
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    Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264)

    Image of the day 02/20/2020

    Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
      Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), Gary Lopez
      Powered byPixInsight

      Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264)

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      Description

      In the constellation Monoceros, the light and hot matter from young, energetic stars cause the interstellar dust and gas to fold, twist, and stretch. The tree-shaped cloud created, nearly 100 light-years long, is decorated with glowing gases and starlight.

      For this image I combined 19 hours of 2018 narrowband data taken with a 336mm FL telescope with 9 hours of newly acquired Ha data taken with a 925mm FL telescope. The color mapping was done with the 2018 data and the new 2020 data were used as a luminance layer. This is an SHO rendition.

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      Revisions

        Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), Gary Lopez
        Original
        Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), Gary Lopez
        G
        Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), Gary Lopez
        H
        Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), Gary Lopez
        I
        Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), Gary Lopez
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      • Final
        Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), Gary Lopez
        K

      H

      Description: Reprocessed with better noise control.

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      I

      Description: Reprocessed with better noise control, portrait orientation.

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      J

      Description: Yep, still cloudy and smokey here so it is time to reprocess old data and correct tiny issues that are noticed by nearly no one except me. In this new version I removed some distracting (to me) color noise blotches and some blown out stars. Ahhh, that's better.

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      K

      Title: Reprocessed stars and noise

      Description: In this rendition I strived to improve the small stars that were distorted in the previous version. While the change in this rendition versus the previous will not be noticed by 99% of the viewers, it is one of those things that I notice every time I looked at this image and just HAD to fix it. Ahhh, that's better.

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      Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264), Gary Lopez