IC 5146 / Caldwell 19 the Cocoon Nebula

[x6gas]

This is a quick go at the Cocoon Nebula in Cygnus and is first light / shake down test for some new kit.

I now have a set of astrondon filters from Ian King and a new 130mm super apo.  The new scope has such good field illumination that I didn't need to use flats on this (I did try, but they over-corrected so I was better off without...)

Scope: TS Optics 130 super apo

Mount: iOptron CEM60 EC

Camera: Atik 490ex

Guiding: Atik OAG, QHY5L II, PHD2

Not much data,  R: 9 x 300s, G 7 x 300s, B 7 x 300s, so under two hours in total.  As a result it's a bit noisy but I'm hoping that won't show too much on this down-sampled version.

Thanks for looking, Ian

[reddoss]

Lovely image. The new TS 130 super APO looks nice as well. 

[swag72]

Looking great Ian - Very natural colours and vibrant at the same time.

[Martin-Devon]

Nice debut for the new scope Ian, that's a great Cocoon - I've tried this a couple of times and failed miserably. Your kit's coming together nicely now, I'm sure that as the nights get longer in the forthcoming week & months we're going to see a lot more classy images like this from you.

Martin

[x6gas]

Thanks for the comments and likes...

@reddos - Yes I think I've fallen in love with the new scope.  Very impressed so far - it's a very well built scope with excellent colour correction and good reproduction of the blues.  The focal length is 860mm so fills a bit of a gap in my arsenal although ideally I wanted something nearer 1000mm as my 10" newt never, ever gets used.  It's f/6.6 so not the fasted but at least that means the focus is a little more forgiving.  I have a Riccardi reducer that will bring it to f/4.97 but I'll need to automate the focus before going there in anger.

@Martin - Thanks.  It was a nice dark night, though the seeing wasn't great (never is here) so I thought I'd give it a go.  I seem to recall seeing something from Olly about just shooting RGB and not worrying about a luminance layer so thought I'd give that a go too.  Early days but I'm liking the Astrodon filters thus far.  This needed very little processing: did the colour combine in AstroArt and a stretch in PS.  A little selective sharpening of the nebula and that was it.

[gingergeek]

Cracking picture, what made you choose the TS 130 ?

[szymon]

Looks very nice!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[x6gas]

Thanks again.

Cracking picture, what made you choose the TS 130 ?

To be honest I've always been very impressed with my TS90 APO carbon fibre, though that rarely gets used now because of the FSQ85 but the TS90 has no vices, has fantastic colour correction, holds focus all night, and is a pleasure to use.  The TS130 Photoline comes with a intra and extra focus shot and a Ronchi test and also has fantastic colour correction so I think for the money it's an absolutely fantastic scope.

It's also completely gorgeous! 

[Uranium235]

Very nice mate, was this using the reducer/flattener?

It would be interesting to see how the 130 handles illumination of a 383L+ chip.

[x6gas]

Very nice mate, was this using the reducer/flattener?

It would be interesting to see how the 130 handles illumination of a 383L+ chip.

Just the TS optics 2.5 "big" flattener (the Riccardi reducer will have to come later!)

I still have my 383L+ so I might give it a go at some point but I'm sure that the illumination is such that it will handle the 8300 chip with no problems.  It has a 3" focuser but I've moved from 2" mounted filters to 36mm unmounted so that will be the limiting factor, I believe.

[x6gas]

Right - I managed to capture more subs for this last night.  It has smoothed things out considerably to the point that I think this is "finished" (and I don't have terribly many finished images this year...).  Overall it doesn't look too different so I decided not to start a new thread...

Data is up to R: 28 x 300s, G: 24 x 300s, B: 24 x 300s for a total integration time of just over 6 hours.

In fact I didn't miss a sub all night (I have more and the CEM60 was guiding like a dream:

Somewhat unhelpfully I had the y-axis scale set to +/- 16 pixels for this screen grab, but up close the chopping of the guide graph was within my seeing limits (and with 1 seconds guide exposures, yes I was chasing the seeing).

Thanks again all, Ian

[theo]

That's a really lovely image of the Cocoon Ian.

Pete

[Uranium235]

Lastest version is a definite improvement, stands up to pixel peeping quite well too