The Pelican Nebula is about 30 light years wide and 1800 light years from Earth, in the Constellation Cygnus. It is separated from it near neighbor, the North American Nebula by a thin dark dust cloud known as L935 [1]. Both are part of a large star forming region that is particularly interesting because it is an unusually active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. Ultraviolet light emitted by young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas in the nebula to hot gas, with the advancing boundary between the two, known as an ionization front [2]. The eye and bill of the Pelican are defined by dark clouds of dust and cold gas while the while the shape of the head and neck are outlined by the bright front of ionized gas [3].
The image of the "Pelican" is slightly amusing, particularly with the two large "feet" at the bottom of the image, but I don't really find the overall image pleasing. Zooming in, so that you can see the swirls of dust that obscure much of the glowing gas behind is both more interesting and beautiful.
The subs were taken over two nights 20 and 21 November 2021, Using two rigs:
Esprit 80/400 with SW field flattener and ZWO 1600 mm:
Ha: 48 x 300s
SII: 23 x 300s
OIII{ 17 x 300s
Takahashi FS60CB with Takahashi 10.4x field flattener and ZWO 1600 mm:
Ha: 81 x 300s
Each channel/system used 40 flats and 40 dark flats and 50 darks
I found the processing difficult, perhaps because there was so little OIII and SII, and stretching the image in Pixinsight seemed to add noise, In the end I stretched it in APP and then adjusted the colors and brightness in Photoshop.
[1] https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astrophotography/nebulae/pelican-nebula/[2] https://science.nasa.gov/pelican-nebula-red-and-blue
[3] https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161119.html
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