There is something pleasant about imaging dense clouds of stars.

I had been thinking of trying to image this beautiful nebula since last year, when I first saw it as a naked eye object in very dark skies with good seeing. This time, the nebula was again making itself apparent as a brightening of the Milky Way near Deneb.

This was taken in early May 2020, and I had to wait until 1:30 am to begin my lights. The temperature was +2*C and we were at our cabin, about 230 km north of Winnipeg, near a hamlet called Wanipigow. Nice dark skies, with Bortle 2 index.

This is an unguided image. The Rokinon 135mm lens was stopped to f2.8, I have 17 subs at. 120 sec, with a slightly hot ISO of 1600. I tried to push my luck with 2 x 300 sec exposures, just to see what would happen, it seemed to be OK. I stacked this in APP and then set the dark point in PS 2020, with a tiny addition of saturation but otherwise this is not processed much.

I would really like any input to process this further to bring out the nebulosity.

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From sky safari 6:

NGC 7000 was discovered by William Herschel on October 24th, 1786 from Slough, England. It can be seen with the unaided eye under dark, transparent skies as a conspicuous Milky Way patch due east of Deneb. Its entire outline, except for the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama, is visible in 10 x 50 binoculars.

To the north the nebula fades imperceptibly into a brilliant Milky Way background glow. With a filter, the "North America" shape of NGC 7000 is vaguely visible. The nebula is brightest in the narrow portion corresponding to Mexico. The dark notch that forms the Gulf of Mexico is obvious.

The North America Nebula and the nearby Pelican Nebula, (IC 5070) are in fact parts of the same interstellar cloud of ionized hydrogen. Between the Earth and the nebula complex lies a band of interstellar dust that absorbs the light of the stars and nebulae behind it, and is thereby responsible for the shape as we see it.

The distance to the nebula complex is not precisely known, nor is the star responsible for ionizing the hydrogen so that it emits light. If the star inducing the ionization is Deneb, as some sources say, the nebula complex would be about 1800 light years distant, and its absolute size would be about 100 light years.