HI all

I've been searching for the North American Neb. for the past couple of nights without any luck. I've used both my goto mount, and starting at Denab and searching manually. No luck

I know it's there, but why can''t I see it?

I'm located somewhat outside of the city, but I don't have the darkest skys. Just for reference, I can see M57 which is not too far away. It's faint, but there.

For the record, I'm using a 6 inch SCT.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Tim

I think you did not succeed because you did probably observe with a magnification far too high for the nebula and suburban skies. NGC 7000 is approx 3 deg wide and has a fairly low surface brightness. You use a 6 inch SCT. The long focal length provides for fairly high magnification, which are not good for NGC 7000. Furthermore - you need perfectly clear skies! I have seen NGC 7000 with the naked eye or in my 7x50 finder scope - under pristine skies. In suburban conditions I would not succeed with my 15-inch.

Try again under very clear skies with a pair of binoculars! If you use your SCT, don't apply magnifications beyond 40x, even then you will only be able to see parts of NGC 7000. Remember, it's 3 deg wide! The "brightest" part of NGC 7000 is "Mexico and Central America", "Canada" is quite faint. NGC 7000 was discovered photographically in the 1890ies. You see, it is indeed a difficult object.

Good Luck and Clear Skies!

ngc2438 is right, the North America Nebula requires fairly dark skies, and a wide field-of-view.  The first time I found it was with binoculars.  A narrow band nebula filter helps also, I've seen it with my naked eye by looking through an Ultra High Contrast filter, and through an OIII filter.  Good luck.

Hi all,

I was using a 40mm EP, which gives me about 37.5x mag, so that probably was not it.  I threw a nebula filter on (forgot which type) and it turned everything blue, but still nothing.

I guess it's the lack of dark skies.  It is not the best viewing from my location.

Tim

 

 Tim - If that eyepiece gives you around 37x, its true field of view (not "apparent") would be about 1 1/4 degrees view - too small to take in the whole nebula. With this actual f.o.v., the sky would also look a little darker, possibly causing more confusion on your part.

      I have tried this nebula with my 10" newt (38x, 1.5 degree t.f.o.v.) and under very dark skies could only detect the brighter areas of the nebula. After years of trying, I tried 10x50 binos and alas, there it was on a fairly dark night. I could also detect a hint of the Pelican nebula across the dark rift from NGC7000 with averted vision.

     So don't give up on it. Try the binocular approach if you can. If not you need an eyepiece with a True Field of View of 2-3 degrees minimum ( a costly eyepiece) and fairly dark sky to detect it and even then it will appear fairly faint, at best. Filters may help some but this object needs wide (true) fields of view and dark skies for fairly easy detection as a faint ghostly nebulosity with a few brighter areas. Binoculars (50mm objectives or larger) are best for these large, low surface brightness objects and 10x50 or 10x70s (to me) seem to be the best size for similar objects. Mr Q