NGC2264 - Cone and Christmas Tree Nebulae

This highly processed image was a bit of an experiment to see what could be revealed in this target.

I took 240 x 30s subs at ISO1600 on 20 January 2017, but whittled those down to 170 before stacking in AstroArt. I took 60 flats but no darks, instead I used a generic ISO1600 bias stack.

The red channel is very noisy, despite using 25% software binning, but I was pleased to see the Cone making a distinct appearance and the brighter parts of the nebula shows a surprising amount of fine detail. I think this target needs a lot more data, which meant that the red channel was rather noisy and needed a lot of noise reduction courtesy of Lightroom. Processed using StarTools with the colour module.  Equipment:  Fuji X-T1 through an Altair 102mm f/7 Super ED with a TS Photoline 2" 0.79x reducer/flattener. Mounted on a Nexstar 6/8SE Alt-Az mount.

NGC2264 stack170ref3605 ST3-1col LR1