Pelican Nebula

 I originally publish this nebula image at December 2016. After that, I have shot some very high resolution material from the same area of sky and I decided to upgrade my old image with better data. I'm kind of happy with the result, especially the details in dark nebulae are much sharper now and shows the complex structures of unionized gas and dust. Main reason is the long exposure time used, for H-alpha alone, there are 30 hours of exposures. Total exposure time is around 60 hours.

The dark nebula in the upper part of the photo is the gas bridge splitting visually the Pelican Nebula and the North America nebula so  that the they look like two separate nebula. In reality they are actually a one large emission area.

Technical details

Processing work flow

Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.

Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.

Deconvolution with a CCDStack2 Positive Constraint, 33 iterations, added at 50% weight

Color combine in PS CS3

Levels and curves in PS CS3.

Imaging optics

Celestron Edge HD 1100 @ f10 with 0,7 focal reducer for Edge HD 1100 telescope

Mount 10-micron 1000

Cameras and filters

Imaging camera Apogee Alta U16 and Apogee seven slot filter wheel

Guider camera, Lodestar x2 and SXV-AOL

Astrodon filter, 5nm H-alpha

Astrodon filter, 3nm O-III

Astrodon filter, 3nm S-II

Copyright: J-P