Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  IC 5068  ·  IC 5070  ·  Pelican Nebula  ·  The star 56Cyg  ·  The star 57Cyg
Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) on 35mm Film, AlenK
Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) on 35mm Film
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Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) on 35mm Film

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Description

A 35mm film image of the Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) just to the right of the North America Nebula (NGC 7000). I used Elite Chrome 200 slide film. The 30-minute exposure was manually guided through a Lumicon Newtonian Easy Guider OAG with a 3x relay Barlow and a 12mm illuminated reticle eyepiece. The telescope was a Meade MTS-SN6 6-inch Schmidt-Newtonian, which came with its own unique fork mount driven by an old-fashioned AC motor drive. Vintage 80's technology.

This was one of several good images from only my fourth night of taking prime-focus, deep-sky astrophotos. Naturally, I was quite pleased with such an early success and even today I don't think it is a bad image. The main problem with film compared to digital, besides significantly less sensitivity, is that star sizes are much larger because of a phenomenon called halation. Better processing using the programs available today, including pseudo-flat fielding and star-size reduction, would probably improve this image immensely.

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Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) on 35mm Film, AlenK