IC5146 the Cocoon Nebula

A habit of astrophotographers is to keep fiddling, never know when to stop. So this is a reprocessing of the data. No major change but several little bits of fiddling with curves. Is it any better? A matter of personal opinion of course, but I think I prefer this to the others.

More frames taken of the Cocoon to make a total of 4 hours 50 mins. The second set wasn't as good as the first but serviceable. I'd lost 5 during the night, one to a lost guide star through cloud and 4 to haze and dawn.
I stacked all of the frames together in Astroart, and though it did the job well, I'd have had to crop and reduce the size of the photograph, so I processed them separately then stacked and did the rotating in Photoshop and retained the full size. Hopefully the difference is apparent.



Taken 23.7.12, on a good clear night when the Milky Way was easily seen right across the sky, from Austerfield.
This is in a part of Cygnus, full of stars, being in the middle of the Milky Way band. The nebula is known for the dark nebulosity, Barnard 168, flowing round it and westwards from it.
The how? SX M25C camera in a William 98FLT, guided by an SX H9C, both on an AP 900GTO mount. The exposure was 36x300sec. Acquisition and calibration with flats and biases in Astroart, with final processing in Photoshop.

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