Imaging IC 5146, Caldwell 19, Sh 2-125, Barnard 168, the Cocoon nebula in Cygnus
Exposures were captured with AstroDMx Capture through an Altair Starwave 60 ED refractor with an 0.8 reducer/flattener, an Altair Quadband filter and an SV605CC 14 bit OSC CMOS camera. The scope was mounted on a Celestron AVX mount.
As usual, the mount was placed on marks on the ground which quickly gives quite a good polar alignment if care is taken with the placement of the tripod feet.
AstroDMx Capture running on the imaging computer indoors sent the scope/mount, via an INDI server running on the same computer, to the star Vega and the scope was focused on the star using a Bahtinov mask.
An SVBONY SV165 guide scope with a QHY-5II-M guide camera was used for PHD2 multistar pulse auto-guiding. The auto-guiding was controlled by a separate Linux laptop indoors.
AstroDMx Capture sent the scope/mount to the Cocoon nebula, with plate solving and was used to capture 35 minute’s worth of 5 minute exposures before clouds brought an end to the imaging session.
AstroDMx Capture capturing 5 minute exposures of the Cocoon nebula
Dark frames, Flat fields, Dark Flats and Bias calibration frame were used in the stacking of the data in Deep Sky Stacker.
The stacked image was processed in Siril, Gimp 2.10, the Gimp Starnet++ Version 2 plugin, Photoshop CS2 and Neat Image.
The Cocoon nebula
What is known as the Cocoon nebula is a group of associated structures:
First is the bright Cocoon, a combination of emission, reflection and absorption nebulae which contain the open star cluster Collinder 470. This structure of stars and nebulosity is located at the end of the dark nebula Barnard 168 which has the appearance of a dark lane leading to the stars and nebulae of the Cocoon.
