Photo of the Week for September 6, 2019
Summer may be winding down, but Cygnus, the Swan, still flies high overhead during evening hours. Situated just two degrees east of first-magnitude Deneb is one of the celestial swan’s most popular targets (especially for imagers): the North America Nebula. Under dark skies this large object is dimly visible in binoculars and is a treat in a small, wide-field telescope equipped with a nebula filter. The North America Nebula is catalogued as NGC7000, while the smaller cloud to the right, is known as the Pelican Nebula, IC5070
Hanwell, New Brunswick, astrophotographer Stephan Hamel required two summers to acquire the 15 hours exposure data needed to create this wonderfully intricate narrowband mosaic of the North America and Pelican nebulas. Stephan used a ZWO ASI1600MM Pro monochromatic imaging camera, Explore Scientific 80mm refractor telescope and a narrowband filter set consisting of an Astronomik 6nm O-III, Optolong 12nm H-alpha and a Baader Planetarium S-II.
