Spring sees the rise of the constellation Cygnus, the Swan, which contains many interesting Deep Sky Objects. Together with the North America Nebula, NGC 7000, and IC 5068, the Pelican Nebula, IC 5070, is part of an extensive Nebula region near the star Deneb. The dark area on the left of the image is LDN 935, which separates the Pelican Nebula from the North America Nebula. It is 1800 ly distant and has been extensively studied due to the bright active star forming regions it contains. In this image the hydrogen-alpha emission is colour-mapped across all three colour channels to provide a subtle near neutral backdrop for the sulphur-II (red/yellow) and oxygen-III (blue) signals. The image was taken at a location north of Dijon, France. Whilst dark, the region is particularly prone to mist and fog. This, and the sharp temperature drops during the night, made imaging particularly difficult.
Celestron RASA 11″
10Micron GM1000 HPS
SIGMA fp (monochrome) / SIGMA TC1411 / SIGMA fp L (colour)
H-alpha / O-III / S-II ultra-fast narrowband filters,
50 x 5 min, ISO 1600, F3.1, 868mm