Christmas Tree Cluster and Cone Nebula in Monoceros

The group of stars that lie in the nebulosity in the lower left middle of the picture is the open cluster dubbed the Christmas tree. If you look closely, you can see the triangular patter of a Christmas tree. The bright star near this cluster is 15 Monoceros. The cluster contains about 20 brighter members and hundreds of dimmer ones and lies at a distance of some 2600 light years.

At the very bottom middle (the picture was poorly framed), one can just make out the Cone nebula; a 6 light year dark patch that thrusts into the background nebulosity.

Images taken with TEC-140 Telescope mounted on Losmandy G11 mount. Camera used was a Canon EOS20D used at prime focus.

Five 3 minute exposures dark and flat compensated, aligned and stacked, background removed and Digitaly Developed in ImagesPlus 2.50 Beta 2.

Note, when I realized I had this picture poorly framed, I stoppe taking exposures. I would like to reimage this area at some point of time.