IC 5146 - Cocoon Nebula

From Wikipedia: IC 5146 is a reflection and emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The NGC description refers to IC 5146 as a cluster of 9.5 mag stars involved in a bright and dark nebula. The cluster is also known as Collinder 470. The cluster is about 4,000 ly away, and the central star that lights it formed about 100,000 years ago;[7] the nebula is about 12 arcmins across, which is equivalent to a span of 15 light years.

When viewing IC 5146, dark nebula Barnard 168 (B168) is an inseparable part of the experience, forming a dark lane that surrounds the cluster and projects westward forming the appearance of a trail behind the Cocoon.

Imagers Notes: I’ve seen a lot of widefield images of this one, but had some other targets in mind, so I got up on this one at 1500mm of focal length. Also not a difficult process, but with a combination of dual band and light pollution filters I am surprised I didn’t get better data regardless of how hard I tried to bring more out of it. Either way, cool object and I will return to it for widefield. I left a lot of the stars in and did not reduce them much. You can see the dust blocking the stars behind.