Cocoon Nebula (IC 5146) (Jeff Ridder)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg) · Contains: B168 · Cocoon Nebula · IC 5146 · Sh2-125 · VdB147

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Cocoon Nebula (IC 5146)

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Cocoon Nebula (IC 5146)

Inside the Cocoon Nebula is a newly developing cluster of stars. The Cocoon on the lower left also punctuates a long trail of obscuring interstellar dust clouds to its right. Cataloged as IC 5146, the nebula is nearly 15 light-years wide, located some 3,300 light years away toward the northern constellation of Cygnus (the swan). Like other star forming regions, it stands out in red, glowing, hydrogen gas excited by young, hot stars and blue, dust-reflected starlight at the edge of a nearly invisible molecular cloud. In fact, the bright star near the center of this nebula is likely only a few hundred thousand years old, powering the nebular glow as it slowly clears out a cavity in the molecular cloud's star forming dust and gas. This view of the Cocoon Nebula traces features within and surrounding the dusty stellar nursery.

Lately, I've been choosing my targets based on their proximity to trails of cosmic dust and framed this image to give the appearance of the cocoon being a fireball leaving a trail of smoke in its wake. While I often use narrowband filters and false color for nebulae, I opted for wideband, natural color for this image. There are some VERY interesting and faint ionized hydrogen regions around the cocoon which are the reddish areas above and below. I'll use my narrowband H-alpha filter to tease these out with more imaging time as conditions permit.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4980919
PixInsight job	170A9I533JO2I60SUFEPILYQMXAM1TA4
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	21h50m58s.98
RA (top/left)	21h56m24s.69
RA (top/right)	21h45m32s.12
RA (bottom/right)	21h45m40s.60
RA (bottom/left)	21h56m18s.27

Dec (center)	+47°24′29″.6
Dec (top/left)	+48°00′32″.6
Dec (top/right)	+48°00′17″.2
Dec (bottom/right)	+46°47′30″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+46°47′44″.7

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Cocoon Nebula (IC 5146)

Cocoon Nebula (IC 5146)

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Cocoon Nebula (IC 5146)

Cocoon Nebula (IC 5146)

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