NGC 2264 with the popular name Christmas Tree Cluster is a young open cluster towards the constellation Monoceros. This amazing region includes also other popular objects called the “Cone Nebula” and the "Fox Fur" (Sh2-27) nebula due to its resemblance to a fox.

Embedded in the Mon OB1 cloud complex, NGC2264 is located at a Gaia DR2 determined distance of 723 pc (Cantat-Gaudin et al. 2018). Structurally, the cluster is elongated along a NW-SE orientation with two sub-clusters C and D in the southern region (down on the image). There is an age spread of ∼3-4 Myr between the older star formation inactive northern region which contains the bright O-type binary star, S Mon, and the younger ongoing star formation southern region within the C and D sub-clusters (Mayne & Naylor 2008, Venuti et al. 2017). Recent studies have found NGC 2264 to be rich in Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) of all evolutionary stages (Teixeira et al., 2012; Povich et al., 2013; Rapson et al. 2014; Venuti et al., 2018).