NGC 2174, The Monkey Head Nebula, is an emission nebula 6400 light years distant in Orion at RA 06h 09m 42s and DEC +20d 30m.  It is assocated with the open star cluster NGC 2175 and is about 2 degress southwest of IC 443, the Jellyfish Nebula.  NGC 2174 is a very bright object that fills the 35' x 35' frame.  North is up.  This tricolor narrowband image was color mapped using the Hubble Color Palette where B = Astrodon 3nm OIII, G = 3nm H-a and R = 3nm SII.  Additional color data from Astrodon Generation 2 RGB filters were added.

The system was guided with an SBIG ST-402 camera on an Astrodon MonsterMOAG off-axis guider. Astrodon Generation 2 LRGB 50mm square filters were used in the Apogee filter wheel. Data were collected automatically with CCDAutoPilot4 using MaximDL4.62 and PinPointPro for image linking.  Data were calibrated and pre-processed in CCDStack. Final processing was done in Photoshop CS3.