Veil NGC 6992-5 with 101mm Borg apo refractor at f/4.1 and Canon 20Da camera at ISO800 for stack of 3 x 6 minute exposures. Taken with HEQ5 mount and auotguided with ST402.
The well-known North America Nebula (NGC 7000), with the smaller Pelican Nebula (IC 5067) to the right, in Cygnus, taken in the deep red light of hydrogen and rendered here in monochrome. This shows the rich detail and structure in the nebulas. This is a stack of 16 x 16-minute exposures with the Canon EOS Ra, on the SharpStar 94mm EDPH refractor with its f/4.5 flattener/reducer lens. The camera had a 12nm Astronomik clip-in H-a filter installed. The images were shot over two nights and with the Moon up for most exposures. Autoguided with the Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone guider. In processsing I used Lumenzia 10 to create luminosity masks on Curves layers to bring out the nebulosity. An application of the Star XTerminator plug-in for Photoshop created a starless layer that was blended back in selectively to eliminate or suppress stars to help accentuate the nebulosity and structure, but without a fully starless image which often shows pockmarked artifacts where the stars were. A high pass filter further snapped up the dark lanes and streaks. A colour grade adds the slight blue tint for artistic effect. All stacking, alignment and blending with Photoshop 2022.
North American Nebula (NGC 7000) and environs in Cygnus. Pentax 6x7 camera on Vixen 108DD doublet ED astrographic scope, at f/5, 540mm focal length. Ektachrome E200 slide film with 50 minute exposure, taken July 28, 2003. Autoguided on AP600 mount. Object near zenith under good but not super clear skies. Scanned on Nikon 8000ED scanner with 8x sampling and Super Fine mode. Image is a single exposure not a stack of multiple exposures. Slight gaussian blur (2.5 pixels) applied to Red channel to smooth background of nebulosity without blurring stars. Also, Blue channel scaled up 100.2% and Red channel scaled down 99.9% to largely eliminate lateral color which spread stars out at corners. It worked very well -- only slight coma remains in Blue and hardly visible in RGB full color.
