Named for their distinctive shapes, these
nebulae are located in a rich portion of the summer Milky Way. The North America
Nebula can be seen with the naked eye in a dark sky. It is located at a distance of
1,600 light-years. The Pelican Nebula is fainter and more difficult to detect
visually.
Instrument: ST-10XME/Nikkor
180mm f/2.8 lens
F-ratio: f/4
Exposure: RRGB: R 8 x 4 minutes, binned 1x1: G 8 x 1 minute, binned
2x2: B 8 x 1 minute, binned 2x2.
Date: September 4, 2004
Location: Landers, California, USA
Technical Notes: Some thin clouds were present for some of the exposures,
which I believe led to bloating of the orange magnitude-3.7 star Xi Cygni in the left side
of the image; some scattered light from the first-magnitude star Deneb is also visible in
the upper right corner. Individual exposures were sigma combined, and the RGB image
assembled in Registar 1.0. The brighter portions of nebulosity in the luminance image were
selected with the Color Range tool in Photoshop CS and an Unsharp Mask applied with a
radius of 2.0 pixels and a threshold of 0 at 50%. A Gaussian Blur of 1.0 pixels was
applied to the dim portions. AGaussian Blur of 2.0 pixels with a threshold of 0 was
applied to the RGB image at 100% before compositing with the luminance image. The original
image was resized for display on this page.
