North America and Pelican Nebulae

[Buzzard75]

I couldn't waste the perfectly good weather we had last night. I live on the east coast and we have had terrible weather for what seems like a month now. Constant clouds, downpours, thunderstorms, oppressive heat and humidity. Typical summer weather for eastern North Carolina. Last night though, the temperature had finally cooled off, there was very little humidity, and not a single cloud to be seen. Unfortunately, the moon was almost completely full. Against my better judgement and all rational thought though, I decided to try and photograph the North America Nebula. It's one I've had on my list to target for a while now. I knew it would be extremely difficult to do with an unmodified DSLR and a kit lens to begin with so I must have been crazy to think I could also do it from a Bortle 5 location with no filter and a full moon overhead. I still didn't want to waste the evening and just see what I could get even if it was just the dense star field. After an hour of trying to frame up my shot I finally started taking pictures. A couple hours later and I was on to calibration frames and then my camera battery died. I've put an extra one on my wish list. Finished my calibration frames this morning and then started processing. It's obviously not perfect, but I was extremely surprised with what I got considering the conditions I was under and the equipment I'm using. I'm sure others could do better with the editing, but I prefer the minimalist approach when it comes to my editing. It just looks more natural to me.

Unmodified Canon 750D, 75-300mm EF lens at 250mm, iOptron Sky Guider Pro
60x120s at f/6.3 ISO800 light frames, 10 dark, 15 bias, 15 flats

[graemlourens]

Considering that you were fighting all odds (moon, unmodded camera etc!), you should be very proud!

I would advise you though to repeat this with 0% moon. You will be surprised what difference it makes. Most of us don't even bother starting if moon is >40% and relatively high & close to our targets or go for narrowband & filters (but this is an expensive route to go)

Kind regards, Graem

[Buzzard75]

10 hours ago, graemlourens said:

Considering that you were fighting all odds (moon, unmodded camera etc!), you should be very proud!

I would advise you though to repeat this with 0% moon. You will be surprised what difference it makes. Most of us don't even bother starting if moon is >40% and relatively high & close to our targets or go for narrowband & filters (but this is an expensive route to go)

Kind regards, Graem

Thanks! I knew it wasn't going to be amazing by any stretch of the imagination and that it would be somewhat washed out, but I still had to try. I have every intent of trying again over the next couple months without the moon and hopefully from our dark sky location (Bortle 3). Like I said, I just couldn't waste the extremely good weather and didn't feel like getting out the dob to video the planets.