The Pelican Nebula"...also known as IC 5070 and IC 5067, 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. The Pelican Nebula is located nearby first magnitude star Deneb, and is divided from its more prominent neighbour, the North America Nebula, by a foreground molecular cloud filled with dark dust. Both are part of the larger H II region of Westerhout 40."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelican_Nebula"---the entire nebula is designated as IC 5070, whereas a smaller region within the nebula, has the same name but a different designation, namely IC 5067. That is the prominent ridge of emission in this image, which spans about 10 light-years. It follows the curve of the pelican’s head and neck.
Matter inside this stellar nursery is constantly getting pulled together under the influence of gravity until it gets dense and hot enough for stars to form. The dark clouds of cool gas and dust are sculpted by energetic radiation from these young, hot, massive stars. Stars are also forming within the dark shapes. A bipolar jet of gas and matter at the tip of the elephant trunk a little under the top of the nebula, called Herbig-Haro object 555 (HH 555), indicates the presence of a hidden protostar."
http://annesastronomynews.com/photo-gallery-ii/nebulae-clouds/the-pelican-nebula/"...Herbig-Haro objects are jets of matter and partially ionized gas ejected by newborn stars, which appear as patches of nebulosity in star-forming regions. These jets are ejected at speeds of several hundred kilometres per second and collide with nearby dust and gas, producing dramatic shock fronts that glow as a result of the gas being heated as it collides with the interstellar medium.
The jets evolve and are eventually blown away by the wind produced by the young star. They disperse after a few hundreds of thousands of years at most. HH 555 is the most prominent example of this kind of object found in the Pelican Nebula."
https://www.constellation-guide.com/pelican-nebula/--------------------------------------------------------
It's been some time since we posted several months ago, during which we took a break. I resumed the project at the end of September and in October-November I was experimenting with various programs and modalities, but ended up using the usual workflow with some intermediate additives that I explain later.
This target has been one of those nebulae that always caught our attention since we met it and today we finally see it realized in this project.
Maurizio captured the images from our backyard and in a mountainous place at 1100 meters above sea level. It is a job with many hours of integration. He used only the Triad UQ filter.
However, when I proceeded to separate the stars from the nebula, I observed that some stars were very saturated towards the red and took me a while to fix this situation.
What was impressive was observing the result of the extraction of Ha and [OIII] done in Siril. The wealth of information of these two components makes this nebula a marvelous marble texture.
Once the stars of Ha and [OIII] were extracted, I did the same with the Green Channel of the normal initial stack made in DSS.
Combine Ha, the Green Channel and [OIII] but in layers applying the Hue and Saturation mode, assigning the colors directly. Here I took as a tip the video made by Steven (EnteringIntoSpace), as well as Thomas and Trevor. Basically the information from the green channel is not placed in that color but rather towards the yellow-orange and the Ha is not at the red end either. The [OIII] towards a turquoise-blue.
For a while I did tests with the Astrosharp program. I found that the visualization interface is not very practical for what I am used to, and for the level of details that I want to see in the image, what it shows is not enough and I then have to save the tiff and open it in Ps, when trying to change parameters every time. I have to do the whole operation from the beginning creating a new copy of the original image.
In the options it offers there is no one for 'starless' images and I tried it anyway with what it offered. I didn't find a setting that gave me a result that convinced me after doing more than 15 tests. I hope that in the future the author can offer a more practical aspect in the visualization and parameters.
In the final assembly of the image, apart from the combination made, I added the normal stack made in DSS and post process in Siril in part using some of its tools as the GHT, applying a small percentage that gave a little more contrast to the image and a stamp layer was made from that combination. In CamRaw, Clarity, Dehaze, White was applied to that stamp, and small touch-ups were made in Hue/Saturation. Another stamp of the above was made for NoiseXterminator and another for Denoise AI layer were used, which were applied around 30% of each as opacity in the final combination of the image.
The abundance of Ha makes our image have a preponderance towards orange-red, which in turn contrasts with [OIII]. The incredible columns of gas and dust in that area remind me a lot of the marble pattern. We were very satisfied with the results and we hope you like it.
Thank you for your attention and Clear Skies to all!
Processed Oct-Nov 2023
https://twitter.com/AstroOtus/status/1749401392861618248Herbin-Haro HH 555 detailhttps://twitter.com/AstroOtus/status/1749401397538226657https://twitter.com/AstroOtus/status/1728034162798469220PS: All this year Maurizio was working on a movable pier base for the new mount (EQ8R Pro) that he acquired more than a year ago and finally finished it these days and it is the photo in Revision B and C. We also received our first astronomical camera a month ago, the QHY 268C but Maurizio realized that the glass in front of the sensor has a defect and the dealer are picking it up tomorrow to exchange it for a new one (we hope).
Meanwhile, when he could, he continued taking images with the CEM 70 (which seems is working well and these days the internal camera for the Polar also started to work again) and the Canon Ra, making several nebulae. He has not been able to continue hunting the current comets due to the limited time available for his job. .... And I'm super behind on processing the projects too
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