A hydrogen-rich region of space in which light from young stars is warming the surrounding gas, leading to dense filaments and intricate structures. The Pelican is to the right, looking downwards. The area to the left is part of the much larger North America Nebula.
Version 2, reprocessed November 2021
I had a crack at reprocessing the data to try and get a sharper result. I succeeded, but the noise levels are correspondingly higher as a result. To get the sharpness I ran a Deconvolution routine, and was also less aggressive with Topaz DeNoise AI.
I also took the opportunity to get a bit more blue into the image. I’m not sure version 2 is altogether better than version 1, but it might suit different tastes.
Version 1, processed July 2021
This image was a summer project. There was a lot of cloud, and each clear night only gave a few hours of decent darkness, but I ploughed on and over the course of six weeks collected just over 30 hours of good quality data. I whittled this down to 26 hours of the best.
The processing steps are detailed in this example workflow article.
* June & July 2021
* Bristol, UK (Bortle 8)
* Telescope: Askar FRA400 f/5.6 Quintuplet APO Astrograph
* Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC-PRO
* Filter: Optolong L-eXtreme
* Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G
* Guide: William Optics 32mm; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini
* Software: PixInsight, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoise AI, Lightroom
* Control: ASIAIR PRO
* 780 x 120 seconds
Total integration time: 26 hours
By Lee Pullen
Example source data
Annotated image
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