Imaged from Beckwith Township

NGC 7000, more commonly called the North America Nebula after its resemblance to Earth’s continent, is a spectacular emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The nebula is a cloud of interstellar gas ionized from within by young, hot stars. Interstellar dust particles in part of this cloud absorb the light emitted by recombining atoms.

The Pelican Nebula, (IC 5070) , which is much harder to see, is part of the same HII complex and is separated from NGC 7000 by a dark lane of dust, putting it on the right side of this image. The whole complex lies about 1800 light years away and spans some 50 light years.

27 x 3 minute subs (81 minutes total integration); Nikon D7200 (unmodified); Nikon 300 mm f/4E lens with aperture mask at f/5;
Celestron AVX mount; auto-guiding with Orion SSAG.

Shot in RAW (NEF); converted to 16 bit TIFF; stacked in DSS; processed with CS6.