IC 5146 - The Cocoon Nebula - 2019 Version
Date: September 5, 2019
Cosgrove’s Cosmos Catalog ➤#0008
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
IC 5146, known as the Cocoon Nebula. This is a small star cluster in the constellation Cygnus enveloped in gas and dust clouds. There are dark areas (non-glowing dust blocking light) and bright areas (gases emitted light due to excitation from local stars). This little fellow is only 4000 light-years away.
Annotated Image
Annotated image of the Cocoon Nebula was created with Pixinsight’s Imagesolver and AnnotateImage scripts. Note that this is the annotated image from a later project as this one would not plate solve in Pixnsight for some reason.
Location in the Sky
IAU/Sky & Telescope Constellation Chart of Cygnus with the location of Cocoon Nebula indicated by a yellow arrow.
This is what it looks like when a plane goes through your field of view during a sub. (click to zoom)
About the Project
This image is the result of 35 frames for 3 minutes each. It would have been 38 but I bumped into the scope in the dark a couple of times and those frames had to be culled.
I also had to cull another frame because of a plane flying overhead.
I have included that image for reference as well. ——>
Capture Details
Lights
35 x 180-second exposures
Total exposure of 1.75 hours
Cal Frames
Not recorded.
Capture Hardware
Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO
Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini
Software
Capture Software: Control: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller
Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Photoshop, Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second-guessing, and much swearing…..
After much research, and a few phone calls to the helpful friendly folks at Highpoint Scientific , my first rig was on order! Within a week I had everything I needed to start doing astrophotography. But of course, I had no real clue how to actually do ANY of it. I barely knew how to put the pieces together much less make them work. This was the start of my journey.