Cocoon Nebula

[Noel Carboni]

Another collaborative astroimage from myself and Greg Parker.

The Cocoon Nebula is a nice example of star formation... Near the end of a filament of dark dust in the milky way, a new star has formed and is causing the hydrogen gas to glow, as well as illuminating the surrounding dust.

Click through this image to see the full wide field image from which it was derived.

http://forum.ourdarkskies.com/gallery_images/1218311368/gallery_131_16_5964.jpg (http://forum.ourdarkskies.com/gallery_images/1218311368/gallery_131_7_735913.jpg)

Enjoy!

-Noel

[Fabs Forns]

I'm iim awe of your work, Noel, and we are fortunate that you share it with us :)

Talk about a starry night! Perfect placement of the Nebula in the frame, big congrats!

[Harold Davis]

that's phenomenal!!! awesome image. i'm betting the setup is a little pricey!!!

[carole wiley]

This is incredible!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Noel,
I agree with Fabs that the placement is excellent. The full frame version has a better look to it than the smaller cropped down version. I may like the others a bit better but this is still fun to see.

[Robert Amoruso]

I echo the previous comments - nice work gentleman.

[Paul Marcellini]

I also like the full frame better. The black space adds a little more appeal. Very cool though to see these shots. Thanks for sharing.

[Michael Pancier]

that's a lot of stars. beautiful image. what size scope?

[Noel Carboni]

Thanks, everyone. :)

It's a Celestron C11 with a Hyperstar 3 lens assembly in place of the secondary mirror. This turns it into a 550mm f/2 astrograph, so exposure times are fairly short (e.g. only 2 minutes) for individual frames. This image was made from a stack of 22 such exposures, for a total exposure time of 44 minutes.

-Noel