North American and Pelican Nebula: Narrowband Image
Cygnus Area Image Index (Pictures of Objects in the Cygnus Area)
The bright "Cygnus Wall" area on the lower left is featured on this page.
From the Wiki Article: The North America Nebula (NGC 7000 or Caldwell 20) is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, close to Deneb (the tail of the swan and its brightest star). The remarkable shape of the emission nebula resembles that of the continent of North America, complete with a prominent Gulf of Mexico.
Check out my close-up RGB/Narrowband blend of the Pelican Nebula here. Other narrowband pictures with this combination, and more info, are at this link. Other astronomy pictures from the Fall 2011 trip are here.
Processing Details: Image Details: 6.25 hours total exposure, consisting of 39*5 Ha frames and 36*5 O3 frames with the SBIG ST-8300m (monochrome) CCD camera with the FW8-8300 filter wheel, Astrodon narrowband 36mm filters, and the Takahashi FSQ-85 telescope with reducer, AP 900GTO mount. The Ha frames compose the red channel, with the O3 frames making the blue and green channels, followed by subjective adjustments in Photoshop CS5. Star shrinking using Noel Carboni's actions.
Above: 39 * 5 min = 3.25 hours exposure from the Davis Mountains. This is the H-alpha component of the image at the top of the page.
The above image has the H-alpha data mapped to blue, the O3 data mapped to red & green, and the H-alpha blended into luminosity. Add some Photoshop tweaking and this is what I get!
|
|
Gamma Cygni (In the Cygnus neighborhood) | |
North American Nebula Area - wider | Cygnus Area Astrophotography Index |
Astronomy Pictures: Dick Locke's Astrophoto Gateway page.... | Images Home |
A beautiful night for astrophotography... You get a handful of these a year in the Houston area, really. Outstanding transparency with very good seeing. The STV autoguider was averaging about .5 arc second corrections. I've tried to get a good shot of this through the scope many times, but always something went wrong (the last couple of times it was bad polar alignment). Got it right this time! Now to take a few more to stack.
Cygnus Area Astrophotography Index
Copyright © by Dick Locke. All Rights Reserved.
Contact and Image Use Information
