IC 5146 - The Cocoon Nebula in Cygnus
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IC 5146 is an emission and reflection nebula. The stars contained within the nebula are newly formed stars. There is a dark lane that runs from the nebula towards the upper right of the image.
In this image, North is Up. This image is cropped to 86% of the original full frame.
Exposure Details |
Lens |
Celestron C-8 SCT with Celestron focal reducer |
Focal Length |
1260mm |
Focal Ratio |
f/6.3 |
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Mount |
Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2 |
Guiding |
80mm f/11 guidescope with PHD Guiding |
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Camera |
Canon 20Da |
Exposure |
183 subexposures of 180 seconds each at ISO 1600 - over 9 hours total |
Calibration |
30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias |
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Date |
September 1, 2 and 3, 2011 |
Temperature |
60F on 9/1, 62F on 9/2, 63F on 9/3 |
SQM Reading |
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Seeing |
4 of 5 on all 3 nights |
Location |
Pine Mountain Club, California |
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Software Used |
Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, stacking, digital development, and smoothing. Photoshop CS5 used for levels and curves, color correction, saturation adjustments, star shrinking, noise reduction, and high pass filter. Carboni Actions for additional saturation adjustments, noise reduction, and smoothing. Gradient Xterminator used for gradient removal. |
Notes |
IC 5146 is a very subtle object, so I gave it a lot of exposure time. The processing was pretty tricky, particularly because of a bad gradient from my Canon 20Da camera. Nonetheless, I think the final photo shows the object rather well. |
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