This nebula was actually quite tricky to process. But, I was so lucky to be able to highlight some of these amazing colours with such a short integration time.
Total Integration time: 9hours 25 min
Moon coverage: 90%
Location: Northern Hemisphere
Bortle: 4
The Pelican nebula is an emission nebula in the constalltion of Cygnus and forms part of the North Amercian Nebula. I also shot part of the Cygnus wall, NGC7000 in 2024. See below.
The Pelican Nebula is an HII (Hydrogen rich) region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula show a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name. Source: Wikipedia.
I have always liked this part of our night sky but never really imaged it that well, but on 21/09/24 I decided to make use of the clear skies that week and headed to that target.
I had recently upgraded my telescope so it was a good chance to give it a little more of a run for its money. My old telescope mount, the Skywatcher HEQ5Pro, now sits gathering dust in my office at home, so I decided to use the new ZWO AM5 mount. I have to say this mount is an absolute beast, and not having to mess around with balancing huge weights at the end of my telescope mount is a blessing now. I'm getting to that age, I'm afraid.
The ZWO harmonic drive copes amazingly well with my 11.5kg scope with all the bits added on: my filter wheel, auto focuser, mono camera, and I have to say that Polar aligning with the AM5 is a breeze too. My older, slightly more mechanical HEQ5Pro was a little bit of a pain to PA (polar align), but this new mount is so much easier and smoother. Time will tell if it needs maintenance or not.
So far though, even on a windy day, which my old HEQ5Pro couldn't really cope with, this new mount has coped incredibly well, and was guiding at a total error of .3 to .5 which, in guiding terms, with such a large OTA (Optical Tube Assembly), is really fab. On a windy day my other mount would simply get nowhere near that.
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