This is a star forming region about 2,600 light years away in the constellation Monoceros. This area is dominated by hydrogen gas and dust and has created hundreds of stars, through gravity collapsing the gas into spheres that accumulate more and more gas until they ignite into nuclear fusion. The Cone, at bottom center, is a dark pillar of gas and dust that is illuminated by a massive blue giant star at the tip of the Cone that emits enormous radiation. There are multiple giant stars in this nebula and they are extremely young at less than 5 or 6 million years in age. As is the case with giant stars, they will also exhaust themselves very quickly in millions of years. Unlike our star, the Sun, that is 4.5 billion years old and will last another 4.5 billion years.


Date Taken:
February 27, 2008
Location:
LBJ National Grasslands, near Decatur TX
Telescope:
Vixen 80ED f/7.5 600mm FL
Mount:
Takahashi EM-10 Temma 2
Camera:
SBIG ST-8XME NABG; CFW-9, with Astrodon RGB, 6nm Ha filters
Exposures:
RGB 42 min each, 6 min subs, binned 2X2
Ha 30 mins, 15 min subs, binned 2X2 (forgot to change binning)
Total exposure time: 2 hours 36 mins
Processing:
Used Rob Gendler's method of layering in 80% of Ha into the red channel and
using 30% opacity Ha as the Luminance channel with Photoshop CS
Calibrated, debloomed, registered, data rejected and combined in CCDStack.

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