Here I present a rare image from the Pacific Northwest, from my backyard, of the NGC 2264, the Christmas Tree cluster and the Cone Nebula.  The New General Catalog includes both of these features as part of NGC 2264, or so Wiki claims.  All roughly 2300 ly distant, with the cluster obviously in the foreground!  In fact there is a small cluster, called the Snowflake Cluster that resides about half-way between the tip of the Cone and the main bright reflection nebula.  These stars are much fainter and are best seen in NIR.  In fact, from the NIR and IR images seen in Aladin, some of the stars of the Snowflake actually are embedded in this dust cloud behind and we can see in my image a number of spotlight-like reflection nebulae that are behind the visible snowflake cluster stars.  But the Snowflake is stated to be 2700 ly distant.  Clearly then, the clouds behind this must be at least 2700 ly distant!  Clearly there are a good deal of other structures present here as well.   The Fox Fur Nebula appears to hover just over the bright reflection nebula.  It appears to contain both red emission and dark (shaded) dust components.  It is clear that for most of the nebulosity here, there is a good deal of dust mixed with the hydrogen gas.  This appears to yield a more muted red, probably because the dust mutes the excitation and passage of emitted light and also the shadows thrown by dense pillars.  And also the dust only can contribute the reflected light for the emission nebulae to be evident.  The Christmas Tree stars almost all appear to be blue supergiants.  And it is likely these stars are contributing the UV that is exciting the hydrogen, etc. throughout this frame.  The Snowflake stars by comparison seem measely.  Only a few can be seen here.  Yes they are more distant, but the fact that the rest are only seen in NIR or IR, tells me those stars are much smaller and cooler stars.  We know now for a fact that those stars are very close to and embedded in the cloud just behind the cluster.  And even this proximity of these stars appear to offer no additional excitation of the gases to cause enhanced brighness at those locations.  Only just a bit of reflection components are seen.

The forecast over a week ago presented me with the prospect of several days of clear weather this past week.  As it turns out, there were 5 completely clear nights.  This was not one of them.  I had spent the 5 clear nights trying to get data on two other targets, with limited success.  High, or very high winds created tough going for my 12 inch Newt, which is a very long and very light rig.  On one of the two nights that I gave up on imaging (could not get focusing even to work), I used the scope to browse objects in the sky, just to see...  I was surprised to see this field of view, since I was expecting the big tree to my south and reaching to 55-60 degrees to block it.  But I was seeing it!  Since this was a far more exciting subject than the other two objects that I worked on earlier, I vowed to get this as soon as clear, windless skies presented themselves.  Well that last unexpected night had high clouds coming in.  After looking at weather maps many times and being dissappointed at having torn down operations only to see clear skies those nights I decided to set up and image anyway.  I did lose 1/2 of my subs to high clouds drifting by and also to that tree, I did get 170, 60 second subs.  I am sure some that I used had haze from thin high clouds, but there was no wind and I was thrilled by the hfr and the guiding.  I can't wait to get this rig to a spot that is better for this hobby.

Given the time of year, I wish that I had double the number subs on this target.  But I am pleased with the result anyway.  I am bothered that coma has reappeared on these subs.  I got new spacers and a Baader heavy duty quick release to use as a manual rotator (works great), and earlier in the week, I had much improved the coma the previous nights.  I will add a bit more fractional mm of spacers in the future.  On Aladin, this field is one of the most dramatic there is.  And it contains a number of reflection nebulae, both large and bold and faint and easily missed.  But the reflection nebula, apparently affiliated with the dramatic Christmas Tree cluster is just wonderful.  Not just large and bright, but it is an illuminated part of dust column that contains voids, and filaments that offer bright and dark shadowed structures.  This one is also bright enough to show true blue and hold off the reds of the excited gas/dust clouds that dominate the rest of the field.  There are several others that can be found as the eye drifts south, on the way to the cone nebula, the tip of which also presents a significant reflection component.  In fact there is another one that appears to be illuminated by the yellow star west of the tip of the cone near the left edge of the image.  But this one is very faint.  There are others.  To enhance the nebular structures and reflection nebulae, I have done significant star reduction.  Also, being a novice with a Newt, the diffraction spikes of the brighter stars become rather distracting when presented in full force!  This is a OSC image with color calibration.  I do color calibration early in processing, so I cannot vouche for color accuracy.   I did review other offerings of this popular object on AstroBin.   OSC/RGB images of this field, that have not been enhanced by HII signal, do not seem to exist at this scale.  Most OSC/or RGB images of this object are of very wide fields.  While I love narrow band images, I find that the addition of HII to OSC/RGB in this case does not do justice to the reflection nebulae.  And certainly, the OSC cameras already capture the reds presented by HII signal.

I also present a starless image in the mouseover that I have not cleaned up or processed in any way except to remove the stars.  So there are artifacts remaining in that.  

I have been using my less preferred ASI071MC pro camera since it was the easiest to set up in a pinch on this telescope.  I am pretty happy.  Here, I used 60 sec subs, at gain 0 and offset of 10.  Not wanting to saturate too many pixels with the super bright stars.  And I am happy that I was able to get some of those stars' blue hue even still.  As far as the coma is concerned, I started to try to round up the stars, but then decided that at reasonable viewing scale, it is not that noticable.  Maybe someday, I come back to deal with them.  But I got data for two other objects and I want to move on...