Cocoon Nebula

Cocoon Nebula by S Migol
Cocoon Nebula, a photo by S Migol on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
Cocoon Nebula as seen at Montebllo OSP in early September 2013.


Two sessions at this dark sky site showed good transparency on one night, not so good on the second night due to regional fires. Local temperatures were high due to the inversion layer keeping it warm on the hilltops.

Note the amount of galaxies that appear in the background of the image. These are highlighted in the annotated version. This is a testament to the clarity of the skies at MBOSP.

Total of 22 subexposures of 1200 seconds each at 100 ISO for 7 hours of integration.

Standard setup with the Stellarvue SV4 with Pentax K10D camera. Calibrated with Maxim and stacked as Median KS in DSS.

Pix Insight processing: Crop, DBE, Masked Stretch Script, Reset black point with Histogram Stretch, Masked for SCNR, TGVDenoise, MT, Unsharp Mask, and Curves to boost contrast and saturation.

Here is the plate solve:
=========================================================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
-5.56312e-007 +0.000530015 -0.664363
-0.000529925 -5.37674e-007 +1.02025
+0 +0 +1
Projection origin.. [1923.998916 1255.498330]pix -> [RA:+21 53 14.48 Dec:+47 15 55.99]
Resolution ........ 1.908 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... -89.946 deg
Focal ............. 656.24 mm
Pixel size ........ 6.07 um
Field of view ..... 2d 2' 21.6" x 1d 19' 50.7"
Image center ...... RA: 21 53 14.482 Dec: +47 15 55.98
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 21 49 14.924 Dec: +48 16 52.95
top-right ...... RA: 21 49 23.234 Dec: +46 14 33.76
bottom-left .... RA: 21 57 14.805 Dec: +48 16 47.99
bottom-right ... RA: 21 57 04.982 Dec: +46 14 29.00
========================================================

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