Another Cocoon - IC5146

[Darth Takahashi]

Taken last night, here is another Cocoon nebula.

Approx 2 hours in H Alpha and 1 hour each in the colour RGB channels.

Considering the amount of data, approx 5 hours in total I real like this image . Framing could have been improved to show more of the darker dust lane leading to the Cocoon itself.

Telescope = TOA130F and my trusty ST10 ccd camera.

I ran it to a small problem in that I had no darks for the 2x2 binned RGB components, so I had to put the camera in the refrigerator this morning to run them off!!!

I hope you like it.

[Catanonia]

Really nice and smooth with great colour. Have you tried lifting the levels to see if you have any of the dust lanes ?

[Darth Takahashi]

Really nice and smooth with great colour. Have you tried lifting the levels to see if you have any of the dust lanes ?

Thanks for the comment, yes I have lifted the level and tried a dark-structure enhancement etc... but My framing could have been better since I have cut off a lot of the dust lane leading to the Cocoon. Something to improve next time I guess?

[JimStan]

I see some dust lanes in the absence of stars trailing below the nebula. It does look pretty good to this amateur photographer ! There is always a "next time" !

Jim S.

[ollypenrice]

Very attractive. You applied much more Ha than I did and that has its charms. You've some nice star colour in the brighter stars, too.

Olly

[Darth Takahashi]

Thanks for the comments guys, yes if you look just below the Cocoon you can start to make out the dust lane... It was difficult to frame it correctly because its so dark.

Olly, 2 hours or a little over with the ST10 seems to be the optimum for the H Alpha components in most of the nebulae , I still need to experiment with the OIII when its comes. But I suspect that not too many nebula are strong emitters in the OIII part of the spectrum?

[peter shah]

nicely caught Neil

[SlipperySquid]

Missed this one Neil! Love the star colour, shame about the framing but you could always try another mosaic

I have found that even when there doesn't seem to much going on in the way of OIII, it really helps the final image.....Look at the Veil nebula's though! they are jam packed full of it.

Matt