North America & Pelican Nebulas

The North America Nebula (aka NGC7000) is a huge emission nebula, a vast region of mostly hydrogen gas, so named because its shape resembles North America. It’s part of the same interstellar cloud as the Pelican Nebula (IC 5070), which is to the right in this image. They are separated by a dark area of obscuring dust. Emission nebulae such as these emit their own light; radiation from hot, massive stars embedded within are exciting the nebula’s atoms and molecules, ionizing them and causing them to glow in specific colors, such as the deep-red of hydrogen-alpha emissions. These nebulas are about 2600 light-years from Earth. The portion of the North America Nebula resembling Mexico and Central America is known as the Cygnus Wall, a region that exhibits the most concentrated star formation.

This is the result of ~12 hours of exposure time taken on 2025-08-19 and 2025-08-26.



Equipment and Software:
=======================
Mount: 10Micron GM1000HPS w/PoleMaster
Telescope: SkyWatcher Esprit 100ED
Auto-Focuser: Pegasus FocusCube2
Imaging Camera: ASI2600MC-Pro
Filter: AstroHutech NBZ dual-band
Imaging S/W: NINA
Guiding S/W: PHD2
Image Processing S/W: PixInsight

Exposure Details:
=================
Camera Temperature -10C
Bias: 50
Gain: 100
114 x 180s Light exposures
187 x 120s Light exposures
Plus 32x Darks, Flats, and Dark Flats

#NGC7000 #NorthAmericaNebula #IC5070 #PelicanNebula #amateurastrophotography #asi2600mc #astronomy #astronomyphotography #astronomypicturesdaily #astrophotography #cosmos #deepsky #deepskyobject #longexposure #nebula #nightphotography #nightsky #outerspace #photography #science #space #spacephotography #stargazing #stars #telescope #universe

Nice to see these with such great detail and framed up so nicely together.

ML

Love the look Bill. And the framing is really good! I like just staying with the OSC colors for this.