Pelican Nebula, IC5070

Notes

This is the Pelican Nebula, an HII region associated with North American Nebula. Hopefully you can recognize the shape that gives this nebula its common name. According to Wikipedia, the Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward. In fact, millions of years from now this nebula might no longer be known as the Pelican

I took the photos that went into this image over seven nights in July, about 1.5h worth each night. This processing is in the HOO palette but the blue didn't initially come out the way shown here, presumably because I didn't get enough OIII signal. I played with the blue channel to get this more recognizable rendition so this makes the coloring even more fake. Technically, it also has some issues with elongated stars. I am not sure where this is coming from as this is a quite good mount now and the guiding was reasonable during the captures. Nit-picking aside, it is still a pretty picture and I'm mostly happy with how it came out.

(This is a standard RGB version of the Pelican. As you can see, these emission targets are mostly reddish-brown in natural color.)

Pelican Nebula, IC5070

July 2022

Gallery

Notes