Date Posted: 9/14/2025
Date Taken: 1/10/2015, 1/16/2015
Scope: Planewave CDK 12.5 f/8, 2541mm
Camera: SBIG STL-11000 with Astrodon Tru-Balance E-Series Gen2 filters
Temp: -15C
Mount: Losmandy Titan
Guiding: SSAG, Celestron 80mm guide scope, 600mm.
Exposure: LRGB 150:80:80:80 (L) 5 min unbinned, RGB 5min , binned 2x2
Calibrated and Stacked with CCDStack2; RGB combine and DDP with MaximDL. Processed with CS4.

This is a close-up of the Cone Nebula, one of two objects catalogued as NGC 2264; the other is the Christmas Tree Cluster. Both can be seen in a wide-field image taken on the same two nights that shows the entire Christmas Tree Nebula region.

The Cone nebula is a star-forming pillar of ionized hydrogen (H II); high energy winds from the nearby massive stars just above the tip of the cone strip electrons from neutral hydrogen gas, causing it to emit red light. The entire cone is about 7 light years long, and is located about 2500 light years away in Monoceros.

This is a partial re-process of an image originally taken in 2015.