IC 5146, the Cocoon Nebula |
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IC 5146, or the Cocoon Nebula, is also catalogued as Caldwell 19. The pink nebulosity is catalogued as Sharpless 125 (SH 2-125). Tne entire grouping is an
emission and reflection cloud that surrounds the illuminating central star BD +46°3474. In the NGC catalog, this object is described as a cluster of 9.5 magnitude
stars in a region of bright and dark nebulae. The star cluster is catalogued as Collinder 470.
Wider-field shots of this region easily show a dark nebula, Barnard 168, streaming away from the bright region like a dark trail, but this close-up shot only hints at the beginning of that dark nebulosity below and to the right. I have never seen this object visually myself, but this is a favorite target of a lot of imagers and I only got around to shooting this myself recently. Sources: Wikipedia, Robert Gendler |
| Constellation: Cygnus |
| When Visible: July - December |
| Distance: 4,000 Light-years |
| Date: September - October 2015 |
| Location: Rancho Hidalgo, Animas, NM |
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Exposure Details: H-alpha: 19 x 30 minutes Binned 1 x 1 R: 12 x 10 minutes Binned 1 x 1 G: 12 x 10 minutes Binned 1 x 1 B: 12 x 10 minutes Binned 1 x 1 15.5 hours total exposure time |
| Equipment Used: 12.5" PlaneWave CDK on a Software Bisque Paramount ME mount. SBIG STL-6303 camera with 5-position filter wheel, AO-L Adaptive Optics Unit, Pyxis Rotator and Astrodon LRGB filters |
| Acquisition Software: MaximDL, TheSky6, CCDAutopilot |
| Processing Software: MaximDL, Photoshop CS5, IrFanView |