Today's Cosmic Postcard comes to us from the constellation Puppis. It may not be super obvious but the slight concentration of stars in the center is actually a physical association, held together by their mutual gravity, known as an open cluster and catalogued as M46 (the 46th object in the compilation by Charles Messier in 1771). We see this against the relatively high density of stars in the northern part of the Milky Way Galaxy.
But this is a two-fer; the red-rimmed, blue disk just above center is a planetary nebula catalogued as NGC 2438 and is not physically associated with the cluster, quite a bit closer to us (1,370 light-years vs. M46 at 4,920 light-years).

February 16, 2026 from suburban Bloomington, Indiana
18 exposures 300 sec. each (90 min. total)
GSO 8" f/8 RC OTA
ZWO ASI2600MC Pro cooled color CMOS camera, gain 100, -23°C, bin 1
ZWO EAF autofocuser
ZWO AM5N mount
ZWO ASIAir Plus controller
Auto-guided, Askar off-axis guider, ZWO ASI174MM Mini guide camera
Processed in Astro Pixel Processor, Adobe Lightroom