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A night imaging the Cocoon Nebula

This is the first blog entry since August. The weather hasn't been brilliant for astronomy, and imaging has suffered. But I did manage to save some photons last week. When I together with hundreds of other keen astronomers. Attended the Norfolk Equinox Sky Camp at Kelling Heath.

The skies there are very dark when compared to my milky suburban sky. One night we had m+5.6 skies. 

If you have never been to the EQSP. I would strongly recommend it.

This evening. I am sitting in the Whirlpool Comand Centre imaging the Cocoon Nebula.

IC5146 is an object that, I have wanted to image since last week. When I took a CCD image of it from Kelling Heath.

I am imaging this large reflection nebula using the Atik 428 and my new Atik EWF2. I have a Baader 7nm Ha filter selected to show the Ha emission. The telescope is of cause - my lovely Altair Wave 115 EDT. Which is now my only imaging telescope.

IC 5146 is a large nebula that is visible between the Summer constellations of Cygnus, and the king of Autumn. Cepheus.

IC 5146 is a reflection/emission nebula. The NGC description refers to IC 5146 as a cluster of 9.5 mag stars involved in a bright and dark nebula. The cluster is also known as Collinder 470. It shines at magnitude +10.0. 
Its celestial coordinates are RA 21h 53.5m, DEC+47° 16′. It is located near the naked-eye star Pi Cygni, the open cluster NGC 7209 in Lacerta, and the bright open cluster M39. The cluster is about 4,000 ly away, and the central star that lights it formed about 100,000 years ago; the nebula is about 12 arcmin across, which is equivalent to a span of 15 light years.

When viewing IC 5146, dark nebula Barnard 168 (B168) is an inseparable part of the experience, forming a dark lane that surrounds the cluster and projects westward forming the appearance of a trail behind the Cocoon. Sadly the field of view that my CCD camera has will not show this.

Watch this space, and keep looking up.

Saturday 30th.

I wasn't able to get enough data on this target than I was hoping for. But here is a 30 min process.



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