Zooming in on the Cone Nebula

This video starts from our location in the galaxy, showing the stellar and dusty band of the Milky Way. Zooming in towards it, we move to the constellation Monoceros (The Unicorn), next to Orion, where the large star-forming region of the NGC 2264 cluster can be found. Within this cluster, we find the pillar-like shape of the Cone Nebula. The dramatic new view of the nebula shown at the end of the video, showcases its dark and impenetrable cloudy appearance. The image was captured with the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and was released on the occasion of ESO’s 60th anniversary.