NGC 2282

NGC2282 is located in Monoceros and is a rarely imaged and understudied object.  The area consists of an isolated molecular cloud that contains a variety of interesting objects such as reflection nebula, a young star cluster and star forming HII regions. It is believed that the cluster contains a significant population of pre-main sequence stars with an estimated age of 2 to 5 million years.

The LRGB image below was taken with my Esprit 150 and represents 13 hours integration time (which took me over a year to accumulate in the sunny UK !)