DIV ALIGN=CENTERa href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0811/coneregion_noao_big.jpg" IMG SRC="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0811/coneregion_noao.jpg" alt="See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available."/a /DIV DIV STYLE="max-width:40em"P P b In the Vicinity of the Cone Nebula /b br b Credit a href="http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/copyright.html" Copyright/a: /b a href="http://aftar.uaa.alaska.edu/"T. A. Rector/a (a href="http://www.nrao.edu/"NRAO/a), a href="http://www.noao.edu/"NOAO/a, a href="http://www.aura-astronomy.org/"AURA/a, a href="http://www.nsf.gov/"NSF/a b Credit: /b P p b Explanation: /b Strange shapes and textures can be found in neighborhood of the a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020503.html"Cone Nebula/a. The a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020108.html"unusual shapes/a originate from fine interstellar a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990509.html"dust/a reacting in complex ways with the energetic light and hot gas being expelled by the young stars. The brightest star on the right of the a href="http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0833.html" above picture/a is a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010424.html"S Mon/a, while the region just above it has been nicknamed the a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080422.html"Fox Fur Nebula/a for its color and structure. The blue glow directly surrounding S Mon results from a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/reflection_nebulae.html"reflection/a, where neighboring dust reflects light from the bright star. The a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070522.html"orange glow/a that encompasses the whole region results not only from dust reflection but also a href= "http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/emission_nebulae.html"emission/a from a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010113.html"hydrogen/a gas a href= "http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/light/ionization.html" ionized/a by starlight. a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_Monocerotis"S Mon/a is part of a young a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/open_clusters.html"open cluster/a of stars named a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2002AAS...200.7002L" NGC 2264/a, located about 2500 a href= "http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980211a.html" light years/a away toward the a href="http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/extra/constellations.html" constellation/a of a href="http://www.hawastsoc.org/deepsky/mon/index.html" Monoceros/a. The origin of the a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020107.html" mysterious geometric Cone Nebula/a, visible on the far left, remains a mystery. p P script type="text/javascript" digg_url = 'http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap081123.html'; digg_skin = 'compact'; /script script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"/script /DIV