Shot in the early morning hours of 8/27, the Coccoon Nebula (IC 5146) is a curious object. It's hard to observe visually in any instrument smaller than 14-16 inches. What you usually see is the associated dark nebulosity trailing behind it. These inky dark trails are usually identified as LDN 1035 or Barnard 168. The "LDN" being a designation from Lynds' Dark Nebulae catalog. I couldn't find much on "Lynds" except that the catalog founder is a lady named Beverly T. Lynds.
This is a center crop of 22 x 5 min shots at 1600 ASA with the Canon T3i shot through the Explore Scientific 80mm F/6 scope. I also used the Televue .8x reducer/flattener. Darks, Flats, and Bias frames were used to produce the image.
Since we were in California, I figured it wouldn't be a real trip unless we photographed the California Nebula (NGC 1499). NGC 1499 is a large emission nebula in the southeastern part of Perseus. Like the Heart Nebula, it's an object that's suitable for a small scope or a telephoto lens. Out of laziness and necessity I chose not to turn the camera to frame the target as that would require shooting a whole new set of flat frames. By happy accident, it's oriented in a way that shows its resemblance to the state.
Full frame of the T3i with 24 x 5 min shots. With the usual darks, flats, and bias frames stacked in Deep Sky Stacker 3.3.4, color balanced in Lightroom, then tweaked in Photoshop.
Originally, I was planning to take the last night off so I could do some preliminary processing and catch up on sleep before the 13 hour drive back home. But the whole afternoon I kept noticing how much the sky was deep blue -- usually a sign of great transparency. So I decided I would photograph for a few hours - until maybe midnight. I wasn't sure what to shoot. My original plan was to shoot the Veil, but as I was studying the Cygnus region in my copy of Sky Atlas 2000, I noticed an interesting nebulosity (IC 5068) BELOW the North American Nebula. This little area shows three concentrations of nebulosity.
IC 5068 seems to be part of the same complex of nebulosity associated with its more prominent neighbor NGC 7000. In the lower right corner, you can see the southern most tip of the North American nebula.
What's interesting to me is the "blocky" or square structure in the target area. There almost seems to be dark nebulosity "combing" across the area as if there were dark clouds obscuring the object.
This target got 30 x 6 min exposures at ISO 1600 on the Canon T3i. The temps were running really hot in the 22-23 deg Celsius range which even after applying Darks, the target appears unusually noisy.
But all in all I'm happy with the image as it's something slightly off the beaten-track of astrophotography targets. A good last target for a week of learning and confidence building in astrophotography.
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