Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  IC 5070  ·  NGC 6997  ·  NGC 7000  ·  North America Nebula  ·  Pelican Nebula  ·  The star 56Cyg  ·  The star 57Cyg
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North America Nebula (NGC7000) imaged in SHO, Andrew Klinger

North America Nebula (NGC7000) imaged in SHO

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
North America Nebula (NGC7000) imaged in SHO, Andrew Klinger

North America Nebula (NGC7000) imaged in SHO

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

The North America Nebula (NGC7000) on the left and the Pelican Nebula (IC5080) on the right are actually part of the same large emission nebula. The streak of dust dividing the two is in the foreground from our perspective. Lying 2600 light-years away and spanning 140 light-years across, this takes up quite a large chunk of our visible sky. You could easily fit 4 full-moon widths across the diagonal using this same imaging setup.

This false-color image represents the Hydrogen and Sulfur emissions as the warmer colors and the Oxygen emissions as blues.

Equipment:  
OTA: William Optics GT81 w/0.8x reducer (382mm fl at f/4.7)
74mm aperture stop-down ring (brings scope to f/5.2)
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G (HEQ-5)
Guidescope: Orion 50mm guidescope
Guiding camera: Orion StarShoot Autoguider
Imaging camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool

Accessories:
QHYCCD PoleMaster

Software:  
SGP
PHD2
CdC
PixInsight

Acquisition:  
Location:
Fort Griffin State Historic Site, TX (Bortle 3)
Dates: 9/3/21
Gain: 200 Offset: 50
Camera temp: -10C
Sii: 21x300" Astrodon 3nm 1.25"
Ha: 22x300" Astrodon 5nm 1.25"
Oiii: 19x300" Astrodon 3nm 1.25"
Total integration time: 5hr 10min
64x darks per calibration (master from library)
30x flats per calibration
200x bias per calibration (master from library)

Preprocessing:
Batch PreProcessing script to generate calibrated images
StarAlignment
ImageIntegration
DynamicCrop
DBE (SII and OIII only)

Luminance Processing:
Duplicated master Ha to use as the Luminance
Deconvolution
ArcsinhStretch x2
HistogramTransformation
Created a duplicate starless version using StarNet
Pushed nebulosity on starless version using PixelMath expression (1-(1-$T)*(1-$T))
Combined the starless version with the image using PixelMath expression F=0.4; (1-(1-$T)*(1-s)*F)+($T*~F). (s=starless photo)
LocalHistogramTransformation x2
MultiscaleLinearTransform for sharpening
CurvesTransformation for slight contrast

Preparing separate Sii, Ha, and Oiii linear masters for tonemapping (applied to each master individually):
Removed stars by running LinearStarNet script
Convolution
ArcsinhStretch
HistogramTransformation

Combined prepared Sii, Ha, and Oiii masters with ChannelCombination:
R: Sii
G: Ha
B: Oiii

Tonemap Processing:
HistogramTransformation
CurvesTransformation with ColorMasks to balance colors
Invert>SCNR>Invert using a masks to remove magentas
CurvesTransformation for more color balance

Combined Tonemap with Luminance using LRGBCombination:
CurvesTransformation for slight contrast and saturation
MorphologicalTransformation for slight star size reduction
UnsharpMask to slightly sharpen stars
Resampled to 65% for web posting

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    North America Nebula (NGC7000) imaged in SHO, Andrew Klinger
    Original
  • North America Nebula (NGC7000) imaged in SHO, Andrew Klinger
    B

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

North America Nebula (NGC7000) imaged in SHO, Andrew Klinger

In these public groups

Narrowband imaging