IC 5146 Cocoon Nebula, choking on dust, in natural RGB color (darkdesertdome)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg) · Contains: B168 · Cocoon Nebula · IC 5146 · LBN 424 · LDN 1020 · LDN 1024 · LDN 1030 · LDN 1031 · LDN 1035 · LDN 1040 · LDN 1042 · LDN 1045 · LDN 1047 · LDN 1052 · LDN 1055 · PGC 167556 · PGC 167561 · PGC 167564 · PGC 167581 · PGC 167582 · PGC 167590 · PGC 167593 · PGC 167597 · PGC 167611 · PGC 167613 · PGC 167614 · PGC 167615 · PGC 67511 · PGC 97241 · Sh2-125 · And 1 more.

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IC 5146 Cocoon Nebula, choking on dust, in natural RGB color

Powered byPixInsight

IC 5146 Cocoon Nebula, choking on dust, in natural RGB color

NO PIXEL PEEPING, please. I attempted to resurrect data from 2 years ago from a poorly collimated Hyperstar lens that produced bad chromatic aberration and tilt artifact, using currently available tools, but the problems were too much for BXT to handle. I had to process this without BXT the old-fashioned way with brute force, using careful star masking, star de-emphasis (pulling the curve down on a star-only image), Star Shrink, and a bit of Gaussian blurring with gradient and star masks to fix the worst of the bad stars from tilt on one side of the image. BXT made the problem worse, not better, but maybe future iterations of BXT will be more robust when it comes to handling tilt, coma, and other optical artifacts. I believe in you, Russ Croman, Master of Xtermination!

The stars are NOT perfect... I sure wish I had payed attention to the Hyperstar's collimation at the time... but it doesn't look too bad as long as you don't zoom in too much. It's very little data, but it came from very high and dry mountain Bortle 2 skies, at nearly 2600 meters (over 8500 feet) elevation. Many lessons in astrophotography are learned the hard way, as we all know. Collimation always matters. And so does altitude, darkness, and transparency.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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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
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Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
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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.
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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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7970628
PixInsight job	GY8TIGLXS8E7HTAWHTL110SEPZYWSNJX
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	21h49m59s.29
RA (top/left)	21h58m45s.76
RA (top/right)	21h45m26s.23
RA (bottom/right)	21h41m16s.37
RA (bottom/left)	21h54m19s.15

Dec (center)	+47°27′39″.3
Dec (top/left)	+47°38′26″.3
Dec (top/right)	+48°44′43″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	+47°14′21″.7
Dec (bottom/left)	+46°09′55″.8

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IC 5146 Cocoon Nebula, choking on dust, in natural RGB color

IC 5146 Cocoon Nebula, choking on dust, in natural RGB color

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IC 5146 Cocoon Nebula, choking on dust, in natural RGB color

IC 5146 Cocoon Nebula, choking on dust, in natural RGB color

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