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IC5070 - Pelican Nebula


Constellation: Cygnus

IC5070 is popularly known as the Pelican Nebula, for obvious reasons (see the image below). Its angular size is rather large 60.0'x 50.0' and the magnitude is around 8 with surface brigtness 16.4. It is an excellent H-alpha object at the start of the season in August!

IC5070 is located next to the larger NGC700 (North America Nebula>.


31 August 2007

Equipment:
Scope: Takahashi FS60c
Camera: Artemis 285
Filters: Astronomik Ha (13Nm)
Exposure (1x1 binning): 25x300sec
Guide scope: Celestron C8 with 0.66x Celestron focal reducer
Guide camera: Vesta SC3 bw webcam
Mount: Vixen GPDX
Capture sw: Artemis Capture (to 16bit FITS)
Guiding sw: LxGuideStar and MTSca Pro

Processing:
Calibration: ImageTOOLSca darks
Stacking: ImageTOOLSca
Adjustments: Photoshop CS2

Image shown at left is reduced to 65%. Click image to see the full resolution result.

This image came about after the longest period of bad weather I have experienced so far, no proper deep sky imaging has been possible the last 5-6 months due to the constant rain and cloudy conditions. The previous winter was also the worst I have seen weather-wise. It means I have lost quite a few skills in how to operate the equipment. This image therefore represents an effort to begin "climbing up the learning curve" once again.

04 August 2006

Equipment:
Scope: Celestron C8 with Celestron 0.63 reducer
Camera: Artemis 285
Filters: Astronomik Ha (13Nm)
Exposure (2x2 binning):
- patch 1: 11x300sec
- patch 2: 18x300sec
Guide scope: Takahashi FS60c
Guide camera: Vesta SC3 bw webcam
Mount: Vixen GPDX
Capture sw: Artemis Capture (to 16bit FITS)
Guiding sw: K3CCDTools3 and MTSca Pro

Processing:
Calibration: ImageTOOLSca bis/darks/flat
Stacking: K3CCDTools3
Mosaic and Adjustments: Photoshop CS2