A number of people have asked me how many stars appear in the Cocoon nebula 3-frame mosaic?  I have a program called Registar which I use to stitch together separate deep-sky frames so that I can see how they fit together.  Registar also counts the number of stars in an image (I don’t think it is accurate to the single star level 🙂 )  Anyway – Registar says there are 68,200 stars in the Cocoon nebula image with its Milky Way backdrop – so now you know.  One thing is for sure, the number Registar comes up with is always a LOT less than you would guess.