North America and Pelican Nebulae with Vixen Polarie
Alqueva´s Dark Sky Reserve | By Year; 2014
In this deep sky wide field image, taken with a very portable “travel mount” called Polarie from Vixen, with a Canon 60Da camera and a Canon telephoto lens L at 200mm f/2.8. we can see the well known North America Nebula (NGC7000) and the nearby Pelican Nebula, (IC 5070), both emission nebulae located in constellation Cygnus, are part of the same interstellar cloud of ionized hydrogen (H II region). Covering an area of more than four times the size of the full moon, NGC7000 cannot be seen with the unaided eye, because it is normally faint, but its prominent shape and especially, its reddish color (from the hydrogen Hα emission lines) can easily show up in the photo camera sensor, that is much more sensitive than our human eyes. Cygnus’s Wall is a term for the “Mexico and Central America part” of the North America Nebula. The Cygnus Wall exhibits the most concentrated star formations in the nebula. In the right side and above the center of the image, we can see the Pelican Nebula, also known as IC 5070 and IC 506, located at about 1,500 light-years away. This region, rich of emission nebulae and dark nebulae, is an active area of star formation powered by the light from young stars, very energetic indeed. In the left side of this picture, we can see the dark nebulae region called Barnard 253, above the left side of the reddish North America Nebula, discovered in 1786 by William Herschel
Note: The shape of the North America Nebula it´s not immediately recognized in this image, because the author as prefered to use a landscape framing. Captured in the sky of Monsaraz, Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, Portugal in 31/05/2014 at 3:45 AM – Canon 60Da; ISO 2000, Exp: 30s. at f/2.8 with a Canon telephoto lens serie L at 200mm + Travel mount Vixen Polarie. Sum of 31 pictures combined in Maxim DL 5 with a total time integration of 15.5 minutes.
