Happy Christmas everyone. This week we remain in the NGC2264 cluster – for those who you who have not notice the theme yet: It is also called the Christmas Tree Cluster ;-). We look at the star V608Mon this time. It is situated (in projection) half way between the Cone Nebula and the main cluster. In images it is surrounded by a nebulosity, which seems to be an outflow cavity created by the star pointing towards the South-East.
We show the V, R, and I-band light curve of the star for the last observing season (2024-2025). The star is much less variable than the sources shown in the last two weeks. However, longer and shorter term variations can be seen at the level of up to 0.5 magnitudes. Indeed most of the short term ‘noise’ in the light curve is correlated, i.e. represents short time scale variations.