NGC 7000

NGC 7000 — Click Image to Enlarge

NGC 7000 is a large emission nebula in Cygnus — more than 10X the area of the full moon, but with very low surface brightness, so it’s extremely difficult to see without binoculars or a widefield scope. Its more common moniker is the North America Nebula, for obvious reasons, especially the region resembling Mexico (known as the Cygnus wall).  A bit of the neighboring Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) is seen on the right edge of the image.

Technical Details as follows:

About 15 hours 3 nm Ha data (from 2008) and 15 hours 3 nm OIII data (from 2014) obtained with a Takahashi FSQ 106N and an SBIG STL11K on a Paramount ME. Calibration was in Maxim, alignment/integration in PixInsight, and everything else in Photoshop. This image was processed with a novel technique — an RGB image was created using just 2 filters (Ha for Red and OIII for blue) by synthesizing the green channel from the other two. This was developed by Travis Rector and modified by Steve Cannistra.