IC 5146 - The Cocoon Nebula
Date: August 22, 2020
Cosgrove’s Cosmos Catalog ➤#0048
IC 5146 The Cocoon Nebula as taken by my William Optics 132mm Platform and a OSC camera. (click to enlarge)
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About the Target
Located 4000 light-years from Earth, IC 5146 - better known as the Cocoon Nebula, is an area of both bright and dark nebulae in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan. The red portion is due to light shining from hydrogen emissions, while the blue portions of the nebula consist of dust reflecting the light young hot blue stars. At the core of the nebula is a bright star that only formed about 100,000 years ago. The shell of gas is about 15 light-years across. Also seen is a dark lane of dust that appears to project from the main nebula towards the west. This dark object is an obscuring cloud of dust known as Barnard 168. To me, it almost looks as if the dark cloud is emanating from and trailing the Crescent Nebula - I like the effect!
Annotated Image
Annotated image of the Cocoon Nebula was created with Pixinsight’s Imagesolver and AnotateImage scripts.
Location in the Sky
IAU/Sky & Telescope Constellation Chart of Cygnus with the location of Cocoon Nebula indicated by a yellow arrow.
About the Project
I composed this shot during the day to put the Crescent in the corner of the frame and include the dark lane diagonally across the frame. Platesolving and automated camera rotation allowed the scope to precisely frame this image for the shot.
Since I was going after the dark cloud, I knew that I would need a lot of exposure time to bring this out. This image results from 179 exposures of 150 seconds each - for a total exposure time of almost 8 hours! This is my longest exposure integration to date.
Capture Details
Lights
179 x 150-second exposures
Total exposure of 7.45 hours
Cal Frames
50 x 2 second Bias exposures
25 x 120-second Dark Calibration exposures
50 Flat Cal exposures
Capture Hardware
Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO
Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini
Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2
Field Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon
Mount: Ioptron CEM60Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras
Software
Capture Software: Control: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller
Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop, Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, and much swearing…..
During the Summer of 2020, whilst stuck at home because of Covid I became very in improving the automation of the platform and achieving a more precise framing of the shots I made…