IC5146 - The Cocoon Nebula in Cygnus... 6 Telescopes (2 the same)... 7 Cameras ... 2 Mounts (the same) 2 locations and 4 Years!

[Laurin Dave]

IC 5146, the Cocoon Nebula, is a reflection/emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The NGC description refers to IC 5146 as a cluster of 9.5 mag stars enveloped in a bright and dark nebula. The cluster is about 4,000 light years away, and the central star that lights it formed about 100,000 years ago; the nebula is about 12 arcmins across, which is equivalent to a span of 15 light years.

The dark nebula Barnard 168 is a dust lane that surrounds the cluster and projects westward forming the appearance of a trail behind the Cocoon.

Source Wikipedia.

Data gathering for this project started at @ollypenrice's Les Granges in August 2019 when we imaged the Cocoon using Olly's Mesu mounted twin TEC140,s with Atik460 and Moravian8300 cameras...  a year later I used my Esprit100SX46 to gather an hour each per channel of LRGB and my GT71ASI1600 to gather 4 hours of Ha... combing all this together produced a very nice "Cocoon core" and started to show the dust lane B168 and the background Ha...  A few images I had seen on Astrobin (most notably this one by Kevin Morefield The Cocoon | Exploring the Dust and Ha Emission Surrounding an Old Favorite ( Kevin Morefield ) - AstroBin ) inspired me to add more data and see what I could produce.   Three clear moon free nights in late October allowed me get some more through the rather complicated set up I currently have...  on the Mesu an Esprit150SX46, on which is piggybacked an Esprit100QHY600mm then a GT71ASI2600 and an Askar200ASI294mm either side of the Esprit150.. all guided by an ST80_ASI174 at 0.3" RMS...   In total I ended up with 14 hours of Lum, 13 hours of Ha and 11 hours of RGB.   Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop with assistance from the Normalise Scale Gradient script (used to combine the Integration files from all the different sources) and Russ Croman's Blur, Star and Noise Exterminators.

It was the first time I had used the QHY on the Esprit 100 and I had back focus issues on the first two nights caused by an adapter not threading all the way down and then by increasing rather than decreasing the back focus..  grrrr..  this meant that only the central 70% of the frame could be used.

Anyway here it is, actually two versions a crop at 1.42/pp (the native resolution of the Esprit10)  and a wider field  view.

Thanks for looking

Dave

[bomberbaz]

Oh wow both are sublime but the wide field is spectacular.

Kudos for taking the time and effort in getting so much data,

[bdlbug]

The wide field is simply stunning, the dark nebula against the rich Ha is absolutely captivating 

 

[ollypenrice]

Fabulous! Exceptionally deep and yet exceptionally clean with superb levels of local contrast in the Ha. Beautiful processing, too. The result has rewarded your effort.

Olly

[WolfieGlos]

Wow, oh wow! What a stunning pair of images.

[gorann]

I fully agree with stunning, spectacular and fabulous! Probably the deepest cocoon images I have seen.

Cheers Göran 

[tomato]

Spectacular! 
Great work with the array of different scope and camera combinations. 👍🏼

[carastro]

Quite stunning.  Worth all the collection of data and effort combining.  
 

Carole

[Laurin Dave]

3 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

Oh wow both are sublime but the wide field is spectacular.

Kudos for taking the time and effort in getting so much data,

Thank you Steve

3 hours ago, bdlbug said:

The wide field is simply stunning, the dark nebula against the rich Ha is absolutely captivating 

 

Thank you

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Fabulous! Exceptionally deep and yet exceptionally clean with superb levels of local contrast in the Ha. Beautiful processing, too. The result has rewarded your effort.

Olly

Thanks Olly..  

2 hours ago, WolfieGlos said:

Wow, oh wow! What a stunning pair of images.

Thanks Chris

42 minutes ago, gorann said:

I fully agree with stunning, spectacular and fabulous! Probably the deepest cocoon images I have seen.

Cheers Göran 

Thanks Goran

14 minutes ago, tomato said:

Spectacular! 
Great work with the array of different scope and camera combinations. 👍🏼

Thanks Steve...   I've had to bolt a Skywatcher Counterweight onto the end of the shaft there's so much on the mount... still guides at 0.3" RMS through the ST80 though!

 

6 minutes ago, carastro said:

Quite stunning.  Worth all the collection of data and effort combining.  
 

Carole

Thanks Carole... 

[simmo39]

What can i say that hasnt been said! WoW. Cant look at the Cocoon in the same way again.

[R26 oldtimer]

Well worth the effort, congrats!