A “Christmas Tree” in the night sky: an image – 15-17 Feb. 2026.
We imaged the famous “Cone Nebula” and the adjacent “Christmas Tree” open star cluster.
The “Cone Nebula” and the “Christmas Tree” open star cluster.
The image above comes from the average of 27, 30-second exposures, remotely taken with the ARTEC250+Paramount ME+C3Pro61000EC robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy, under the darkest skies of the Italian peninsula, equipped with a narrowband Ha filter.
NGC 2264 is a vast star-forming region located in the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn), about 2,500 light-years from Earth. It is not a single object, but a complex system that includes dark nebulae, glowing gas clouds and a young open cluster. Among its most famous components are the “Cone Nebula” and the so-called “Christmas Tree Cluster“, named for the arrangement of its stars, which resembles the shape of a fir tree.
The “Cone Nebula” is a structure of gas and dust about 7 light-years tall, shaped by stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation emitted by nearby massive stars. This interaction sculpts the interstellar material into striking and dynamic forms, typical of star-forming regions. The Christmas Tree Cluster, on the other hand, is composed of very young stars, some of which are still surrounded by protoplanetary disks.
Another fascinating part of NGC 2264 is the “Fox Fur Nebula“, just above the bright star in the center of the picture and characterized by intriguinf filaments caused by ionized hydrogen. The entire complex represents a natural laboratory for studying stellar evolution, as it contains objects at different stages of development.
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