NGC2264 The Fox Fur Nebula.

NGC2264 The Fox Fur Nebula. This cloud of nebulosity belongs to the same cloud that contains the cone nebula and the Chrismas tree cluster. It lies in the consellation of Monocceros the Unicorn at a distance of 2,700 light years. I was using my Ten inch F4.8 reflector, a Vixen Atlux Mount PHD auto guiding an Atik 383L mono CCD camera and a set of Astronomik narrowband filters. The filters I was using were SII, OIII, H-alpha and blue. I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image. The sky conditions on this particular evening were very good. Stars were visible down to magnitude five. The total exposure times were 90 minutes using a H-alpha filter, sixty minutes using an OIII filter, forty minutes using an SII filter and thirty minutes using a blue filter.

Narrowband + RGB

Narrowband luminance, RGB colour data

Hubble Palette

Foxfur Cropped