Sorry, yet another IC5146!

[Black Knight]

This is my first ever attempt on the Coccon nebula, inspired by (but not matching!), Ollys excellent example. No smooth dusty lanes for me! The subs (around 3 hours worth), were taken over two nights this week.

Skywatcher 8" Quattro

Skywatcher coma corrector

Canon 500D modded

31 x 300 secs, 800 ISO

20 Darks, 45 Flats

Overall, I was quite pleased because my guiding graph was going all over the place, although my PA and drift alignment were spot-on. An ongoing puzzle, but hey ho!

The image as a whole turned out much better than I expected. Also this was the first time I had tried combining exposures from different nights, each with their own darks and flats. So as far as that was concerned it was a bit of an experiment and a learning experience - especially lining the camera up for the second nights imaging!

But ....

Try as I might I cannot get rid of that gradient. And why are the stars on the right-hand side all brown? Is that just light pollution?

As always, comments welcome.

Anyway, thanks for looking

[Cloudwatcher]

I may be talking out the back of my neck here (frequently do,just ask the missus ) but isn't the whole area around the Coccon pretty dusty? Could this be the reason for the 'brown' stars?

Anyway,I had a play with saturation and levels and it certainly looked to me as if there was a brownish area lurking in the background. I usually avoid nebulae,so as I say,I may be talking rubbish......

I can say with certainty however that your image is a good capture nicely framed.

[Black Knight]

Thanks, Cloudwatcher . Yeah that area is pretty dusty. However I have the same-ish brown-ish gradient across all the images I've taken this week. Here is an image of M27 I posted in another thread. Wondered if this is likely to be light pollution, or perhaps amp noise?