Cocoon Nebula

[Davide Simonetti]

Cocoon Nebula: Not an easy target from London as it is quite faint but worth trying to capture because it's such a pretty object. With an f12 scope it took three and a half hours of exposure to get this much detail. A lot of stopping and starting due to guiding problems meant I had to crop it more than I wanted to resulting in the stars looking a bit bloated, and more sessions would only make that worse, so this first attempt is completed. However this is definitely a target to return to.

26 x 8 minute exposures at 400 ISO (3 hours and 28 minutes)
27 x dark frames
20 x flat frames
21 x bias/offset frames (subtracted from flat frames only)

Captured with digiCamControl
Guided with PHD2
Processed in Nebulosity, Maxim DL and Photoshop

Equipment:
Celestron NexStar 127 SLT
Skywatcher EQ5 Mount
Orion 50mm Mini Guide Scope
ZWO ASI120 MC imaging and guiding camera
Canon 700D DSLR

[uhb1966]

Hello Davide, great job from London with its LP! And good guiding as well, i whish i'd had solved my guiding probs :/ One thing i noticed was a halo around bright stars that i get with dew, what do you think?

[laudropb]

Very nice image given the LP skies.