The Gulf Region of the North America Nebula (NGC7000)

[RobH]

Here's the 'Wall' or 'Gulf of Mexico section of the North America nebula imaged while we spent the summer camping last year....I'm amazed that we actually got as much clear sky as we did during the wettest summer on record....one that we spent 14 weeks under canvas enjoying!

The nebula is a huge cloud of ionised gas and dust in the constellation of Cygnus, and it's thought to have a distance of about 1600 light years, meaning that it's probably being heated up the massive supergiant star Deneb.

Ha. 60 x 600s

OIII 46 x 600s

RGB 19 x 240s each

Total imaging time; 21hrs 24 minutes

Imaged in August and September 2012 from Fleet farm campsite, Weymouth and Church Farm campsite, Sixpenny Handley, Dorset.

Telescope; TMB 80.480

Camera; Atik 16HR

Astronomik filters

Mount; HEQ5 Synscan & EQMod/Cartes du Ciel

PHD/Lodestar guiding

Cheers

Rob

[Black Knight]

Very tasty indeed

[Jessun]

Stunning! So much going on there, and lovely star colour - the yellows and blues in the midst of the red gas look great!

/Jesper

[Gina]

Great shot - all that exposure time really paid off

[Tim]

That's a bit tasty Rob

Not often you see such a nice effect on the stars in an image dominated by narrowband data, these are really crisp sharp and colourful, and there's bucketloads of them! Ha filters can minimise them a bit but not here

That was some session!

Tim

[badgerchap]

Simply awesome.

[morimarty]

A beautiful image Rob, love the colours in the starfield!

[ollypenrice]

As Tony Blair would say, Resolution, Resolution, Resolution...

And this has it!

Very good indeed and, as Tim says, very fine stars too.

Olly

[RobH]

Thankyou all

Glad a few of you have picked up on the stars. I'm very happy with the way they've come out, which took a lot of thought and experimentation with different approaches before I managed to get them tight and colourful, and avoided the problem with the Ha luminance star size not matching the colour channel star sizes. Consequently, this image has been through several iterations over the past couple of months.

Cheers

Rob