The Cocoon region, well known in astrophotographic circles, was first mentioned in 1905 by E. Barnard, who discovered this object on photographs in 1893. IC 5146 is a nebula with an embedded open star cluster in the constellation Cygnus. The star cluster is called Collinder 470. The nebula has an apparent extension of about 10 arcminutes and is about 3000 light years away from earth. The nebula is a star formation area with ionized hydrogen and has both emitting and reflecting components.