Combination of 10, 1 minute exposures. SBIG ST8XE CCD camera.
300mm f/4 Tamron zoom lens at 150mm.
NGC 7000 is the well-known North America Nebula in Cygnus. Occasionally visible to the naked eye, it is not a difficult object with an 8" telescope providing the skies are dark and low magnification is used.
There are a number of other nebulae in the above image. The most well-known one is situated just to the west (left) of NGC 7000. This is IC 5067/5070, more commonly known as the "Pelican Nebula".
The image above is a much reduced version. To see the original, click here.
I was never really satisified with the above mosiac. The individual images were taken over a long period of time under quite variable conditions, and with a CCD that has a rather small chip. So I always planned to redo the mosiac using my larger CCD. In June 2010, I took some time out of my other imaging projects to re-shoot the mosiac. This time it only took 4 images to cover the nebula, and since the larger CCD chip was also more sensitive, fewer sub-exposures were needed. As a result, the entire mosiac was completed in under 3 hours!
The image above is a much reduced version. To see the original, click here.
