The
Cone Nebula is an
H II region in the constellation of
Monoceros. It was discovered by
William Herschel on December 26, 1785, at which time he designated it H V.27. The
nebula is located about 830
parsecs or 2,700
light-years away from
Earth. The Cone Nebula forms part of the nebulosity surrounding the
Christmas Tree Cluster. The designation of NGC 2264 in the
New General Catalogue refers to both objects and not the nebula alone.The diffuse Cone Nebula, so named because of its apparent shape, lies in the southern part of
NGC 2264, the northern part being the magnitude-3.9
Christmas Tree Cluster. It is in the northern part of
Monoceros, just north of the midpoint of a line from
Procyon to
Betelgeuse.The cone's shape comes from a dark
absorption nebula consisting of cold molecular hydrogen and dust in front of a faint
emission nebula containing hydrogen ionized by
S Monocerotis, the brightest star of NGC 2264. The faint nebula is approximately seven light-years long (with an apparent length of 10
arcminutes), and is 2,700 light-years away from Earth.The nebula is part of a much larger star-forming complex—the
Hubble Space Telescope was used to capture images of forming stars in 1997.
I expected more OIII to be present. I need to look at gaining more OIII data and more data overall as it is still quite noisy.
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