<BGSOUND SRC="http://www.stardoctor.org/Imagine-L-Lennon.mid" LOOP=INFINITE>

Cocoon Nebula

The Cocoon Nebula (Caldwell 19, NGC 5146) is a stellar nursery, with its delicate fabic of glowing hydrogen torn asunder by the solar wind of newborn stars.  Imagine scanning the heavens from a planet within this nebula.  While we envision a glowing scarlet sky obscuring most stars, in reality the inhabitants would barely notice the nebula.  The faint rustic shade emitted by the hydrogen cloud would just contribute to the background canvas of the night sky.  Beyond the central glow of hydrogen, surrounding instellar dust begins to dominate.  Closer to the central star, this dust reflects pale blue light.  Further away, the dust fades, and instead blocks the light of background stars farther away.  This image was obtained though a Meade LX200R telescope and AP 0.67x reducer with an ST10 camera.  Exposures were 120 minutes Hydrogen-alpha, 35 minutes red, 30 minutes green, and 30 minutes blue, for a total imaging time of 3 hours and 30 minutes.  All exposures were binned 2x2 due to poor seeing conditions.

Music:  Imagine, by John Lennon