Pelican and North America Nebulas

This is the image I got last night

They really do look like their namesakes!

Neil

(Right click to see full size)

Thanks, Neil

You stayed up, so we didn't need to

Very nice image. ... Please let's have all the details about capture & processing.

MichaelG.

Well you asked for it

First good image with my 'new' Skywatcher 130P-DS Newtonian (focal length 585mm with x0.9 coma corrector*) (meant for astrophotography on a budget).

Canon 450D which has had the main IR/UV filter removed to make it more sensitive.

I used a £10 'moon & skyglow' filter off eBay and this is the first shot from our garden where gradient removal hasn't been reeded.

87 photos taken, all 60 seconds at ISO1600, plus 60 darks, 36 flat frames and 30 bias frames.

All stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, no colour balancing(!) just stretching and curve tweaking to produce an an 'artificial luminance' layer, then some noise removal and contrast enhancement. The RGB layer had a more modest stretch, auto-balanced then the colour increased and some increase star colour and gaussian blurring.

Notable features are the bright blue reflection nebula around 57 Cygni at top left and the 'wall' along the 'Central America' at bottom left.

The hardest part was framing the image as the nebulosity was barely visible on the unstretched subs, and I had to go by the position of the stars . A slightly larger FOV would have been nice. I will probably revisit the wider area with a 135mm lens soon.

Neil

*The coma corrector is a devilishly clever bit of optics that removes distortions of stars away from the centre of the image on faster scopes. You'll notice the stars are nice and round right to the corners which is really pleasing.

Wow that's good!