by Gregg Waldron
NGC 7000, commonly called the North America Nebula, is a huge cloud of ionized gas in the northern Milky Way. Current estimates place the nebula 1,800 light years from Earth, which would make it around 100 light years across. This is a false color image in which hydrogen gas is shown as red and oxygen is shown as blue. A synthetic green channel was made by combining the other two colors in order to assemble the final image.
I acquired the data for this image in 7 nights (26JUL10, 27JUL10, 21AUG10, 27AUG10, 28AUG10, 30AUG10, & 31AUG10) at Jenny Jump State Forest, NJ for a total of 12 hours of exposure time. Image was processed in Photoshop CS using techniques learned from Steve Cannistra, Ken Crawford, Bob Franke, and J-P Metsavainio.
Photo Data:
Telescope: Orion ED80 f/7.5 Refractor with WO FF/FR V.II
Mount: Sirius GEM with EQMOD
Camera: Hutech Modified Canon XSi
Guiding: Orion 8” f/4.9 Newtonian + Orion SSAG with PHD
Filters: Astronomik EOS 12nm Clip Filters
Total exposure time: 18x600s (3 hours total) @ ISO 1600 for Ha + 54x600s (9 hours total) @ ISO 1600 for OIII, 30 darks, 30 bias