IC 5146 - The Cocoon Nebula (Steve Rosenow)

IC 5146 - The Cocoon Nebula

Last night I decided to move off of the NGC / Messier catalogs and switch over to the Index Catalog side of things, at the suggestion of a friend. His suggestion? IC 5146 also known as the Cocoon Nebula. At first I had a bit of trouble with finding it in the hand controller until someone on Facebook walked me through how to switch menus on the LX200 Classic's hand controller.

This is a combined stack of 110 light frames @ 30 seconds each, ISO1600. 30 darks and flats were also applied for calibration, plus 20 bias. I am going to shoot more of this target for more integration on it.

Also, last night, while capturing this (and later, IC 1396) I spotted one heck of a fireball. It blazed the sky in the direction of Ursa Major in a west-trending direction and lit the sky up twice the brightness of the full moon! It has been ages since I've seen a meteor light up that spectacularly!

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	332138
PixInsight job	n/a
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