North American and the Pelican
Image Details:
This is an area of the summer constellation Cygnus relatively close to the Swan’s head-star Deneb. These nebula are popular targets since they are relatively bright, though Cygnus in general hosts a variety of bright and extremely dim targets for astrophotographers of all skill levels. Under dark skies and clear conditions the North American nebula (NGC 7000), or the area on the left with an appearance like the North American continent, is plainly visible to the naked eye. To the right is the Pelican nebula (IC 5070) which is much dimmer, though estimates in luminosity in Astronomy are not always straightforward since they rely in part on the apparent size of the nebula.
I shot this as a 2-panel mosaic and was impressed by how well it turned out specifically without any addition of narrowband photos. I did attempt capture of some 12nm Hydrogen-alpha (which is responsible for the predominantly red coloring seen in the nebula) but deleted what little data I did take. Narrowband filters isolating only single bands of light are inefficient for color cameras, and while this is possible to overcome through long exposure and stacking, I eventually found that the Summer heat had caused the uncooled sensor to generate far more noise than usual.
Equipment:
Astrotech AT72ED & 0.8X Reducer/Flattener (344mm Focal Length, F/4.8)
Astromodified Canon T3i
Celestron CG5-GT
Autoguiding: Orion 50mm Guidescope + ZWO ASI224MC
Exposures:
One-Shot Color with CLS-CCD LP Filter: 136 x 600” (Total: 22h 40m)
Misc Details:
Capture Software: AstrophotographyTool, PHD2 (guiding), Pegasus Powerbox (dew heater control, power management)
Processing Software: PixInsight
Taken from: Wichita, KS, Bortle 4
Capture Dates: 7-8, 17, 20 July, 2017
