SHADOWS OF THE NORTH AMERICA NEBULA

2020 Monthly Winners2020

Sep 20

Date image was taken: 6/15/2020

Image Title: SHADOWS OF THE NORTH AMERICA NEBULA

Image Description and Details : The North America Nebula NGC7000 captured earlier this year using the QHY367 Pro C full frame one shot color 36 Megapixel CMOS camera mounted on the Takahashi 130 FSQ.
Often ignored in images of The North America Nebula is the immense patch of shadows, the dark nebula LDN 935 appearing prominently (left of center) with the Cygnus Wall (at bottom left) and The Pelican Nebula IC 5070 (at center). The dust from this dark nebula obscures the emission nebula to form the region known as The Gulf of Mexico. This detailed image surely visualizes the nature of dust and gas clouds that populate the universe.
In this Hubble Palette version (SHO) the H-Alpha is mapped to green, SII is mapped to red and OIII is mapped to the blue channel. RGB data was used for the natural star color, while the colors in this image are not the true colors, the narrowband filters used in the making of this Hubble Palette image reveal much more of the hidden gasses not visible in a broadband image, covering an area over 3 x 2 degrees of sky.

Captured over 5 nights in May and June 2020 for a total acquisition time of 20.8 hours.

Technical Details
Captured and processed by: Terry Hancock
Location: GrandMesaObservatory.com Purdy Mesa, Colorado
Dates of Capture May 21, 29, June 10, 12, 15 2020
RGB 290 min 29 x 600 sec
HA 495 min 33 x 900 sec
OIII 210 min 14 x 900 sec
SII 255 min 17 x 900 sec
Narrowband Filters by Chroma (5nm)
Camera: QHY367 ProC full frame one shot color CMOS
Filter Wheel: QHYCFW3 Large
Gain 2850, Offset 76
Calibrated with dark, Bias and Flat Frames
Optics: Walter Holloway's Takahashi FSQ 130 APO Refractor @ F5
Image Scale: 1.56 arcsec/pix
Field of View: 3d 7' 41.0" x 2d 3' 5.3 (127.3 x 190.1 arcmin)
EQ Mount: Paramount ME
Image Acquisition software Maxim DL6 Pre Processing in Pixinsight Post Processed in Photoshop CC and Starnet.