The Ruby Jewel of Cygnus: Cocoon Nebula (Ha-LRGB)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg) · Contains: Cocoon Nebula · IC 5146

The Ruby Jewel of Cygnus: Cocoon Nebula (Ha-LRGB), Bill Long - Dark Matters Astrophotography

Powered byPixInsight

The Ruby Jewel of Cygnus: Cocoon Nebula (Ha-LRGB)

Link: https://darkmattersastro.com/product/cocoon-ha-lrgb/

Powered byPixInsight

The Ruby Jewel of Cygnus: Cocoon Nebula (Ha-LRGB)

Link: https://darkmattersastro.com/product/cocoon-ha-lrgb/

This is one of the first objects I tried to image when I was still imaging from the yard, and with my Edge 8" SCT I had at the time. The data was fairly bad, so bad I do not have it any longer. I made another attempt, this time wide-field, with an FSQ setup I had and that data was completely ruined by smoke in the sky from wildfires that year. After that I never tried to image it again.

Fast forward to the New Mexico system, and I decided the time was right to try the Cocoon again. While I am happy I did, processing this monster was a much taller task than I thought it would be. There is so much dust in the area at different levels of faintness, and I wanted to try and get as much of it as I could from the data I had. Thus, after a good 10 or so runs at the data, I was finally able to produce a decent image in LRGB. The next task was to integrate the HA data cleanly, and to ensure that I was only transferring any of the obvious signal in the Cocoon and only the additional diffuse hydrogen that was caught in the HA subs. This, took a lot of trial and error to get just right. Thankfully, I was able to arrive at something I think is a good representation of the data.

As for the object itself, the field framed like I have it here looks like a meteor crashing down in the sky, with the diffuse HA acting as the ejecta for the impact event, and the dust trail acting as the path the meteor took. There are a lot of stars in this region, which is not surprising given this target is in Cygnus. The field has a lot of interesting additional objects in it, like the blue-ish reflection nebula very close to the Cocoon. Overall, I am very pleased with the image and from a certain point of view -- happy to be done working on it!

AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum
Cloudy Nights

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 success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9299268
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

The Ruby Jewel of Cygnus: Cocoon Nebula (Ha-LRGB)

The Ruby Jewel of Cygnus: Cocoon Nebula (Ha-LRGB)

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Acquired at

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

The Ruby Jewel of Cygnus: Cocoon Nebula (Ha-LRGB)

The Ruby Jewel of Cygnus: Cocoon Nebula (Ha-LRGB)

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Acquired at

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information