The Cocoon Nebula, also known as IC 5146 or Caldwell 19(C19) is a reflection nebula. It is a star cluster lighting up a dust cloud.
The cluster is approximately 4,000 light years away, and the big star in the middle formed about 100,000 years ago.
The nebula has an apparent size of 12 arcmins, roughly equivalent to a width of 15 light years.
It looks like it is sticky and rolling through the Milky Way picking up stars, but the dark areas “behind” it are dust clouds blocking out the stars behind it. This dark nebula is Barnard 168 (B168).
This image was made of a stack of 321 subs, 60sec each from a 500mm f4 set to f5.6.
It was combined with 48 dark, 114 flat, and 99 bias frames.