Mike Lewis
Staff Member
So I finally got over to work on my setup that is at a friend's house in Castle Rock. The equipment alignment on the permanent pier went very well, and so the next thing was to run the system a little bit. So I decided to point at the Pelican Nebula and take some narrowband data through the Hydrogen-alpha filter, to combat the full moon (data was taken on 09/12/2019). This is literally the first astro data I have collected since June of 2018. Yikes.
I never cease to be amazed at what you can get with a H-a narrowband filter, even with a full moon. This is not intended as my final attempt for this iconic object, but it for only 43 minutes of data collection I was pleased with how it came out. While the full 3 band color treatment that Andrew recently posted generally creates a more interesting image, this shot with a wider field telescope gives you a better understanding of why this is called the Pelican Nebula (although to me it looks more like a Pterodactyl
)
Equipment:
ZWO ASI1600MM-C Camera @ -15C and
Gain:300 Offset:50
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
Light Frames:
Ha: 13 x 200 secs (43 mins)
Dark Frames:
6 x 200 secs (20 mins)
Details about The Pelican Nebula From Wikipedia:
The Pelican Nebula (also known as IC 5070 and IC 5067[1]) is an H II region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula bear a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name.[1] The Pelican Nebula is located nearby first magnitude star Deneb, and is divided from its more prominent neighbour, the North America Nebula, by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust.
The Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward. Particularly dense filaments of cold gas are seen to still remain, and among these are found two jets emitted from the Herbig–Haro object 555.[1]
I never cease to be amazed at what you can get with a H-a narrowband filter, even with a full moon. This is not intended as my final attempt for this iconic object, but it for only 43 minutes of data collection I was pleased with how it came out. While the full 3 band color treatment that Andrew recently posted generally creates a more interesting image, this shot with a wider field telescope gives you a better understanding of why this is called the Pelican Nebula (although to me it looks more like a Pterodactyl
)
Equipment:
ZWO ASI1600MM-C Camera @ -15C and
Gain:300 Offset:50
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
Light Frames:
Ha: 13 x 200 secs (43 mins)
Dark Frames:
6 x 200 secs (20 mins)
Details about The Pelican Nebula From Wikipedia:
The Pelican Nebula (also known as IC 5070 and IC 5067[1]) is an H II region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula bear a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name.[1] The Pelican Nebula is located nearby first magnitude star Deneb, and is divided from its more prominent neighbour, the North America Nebula, by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust.
The Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward. Particularly dense filaments of cold gas are seen to still remain, and among these are found two jets emitted from the Herbig–Haro object 555.[1]
