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Cone and Fox Fur nebulae
Cone and Fox Fur nebulae, optical image. The Cone Nebula is the dark wedge obscuring the red emission nebula at upper left. The Fox Fur nebula is the multicoloured region at lower right. The entire region is classified as NGC 2264. It is a huge gas cloud that glows red as the hydrogen it contains is ionised by radiation from hot young stars that formed within it. The Fox Fur nebula has blue components as well as red. These areas are reflection nebulae, which do not glow through ionisation but instead simply reflect the light from the blue/white stars near them. The NGC 2264 complex lies around 2700 light years from Earth in the constellation Monoceros.
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