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North American Nebula

The North American Nebula is easy to recognize by its resemblance to our continent, with Mexico, the Caribbean, and Florida clearly recognized.  This geographic shape is of course just coincidence.  From a dark sky site, I have observed the distinct shape of this large faint nebula with the aid of special nebula filters, that darken the background sky.  The nebula lies at a distance of 1,800 light years in the constellation Cygnus, and spans a region 50 light years across.  This image on the left combined 2 hours 30 minutes exposure though a hydrogen-alpha filter with 24 minutes of green and 36 minutes of blue exposures.  I used a Takahashi 90mm refractor with a reducer to yield a focal length of about 400mm, with an ST10XME camera.  The photo below includes a wider area of both the North American Nebula and tthe Pelican Nebula.  Both nebula are actually the same cloud of hydrogen gas with the intervening region darkened by obscuring interstellar dust.  The Pelican faces the North American Nebula, with its large beak pointing towards the Yukatan Peninsula.  A more detailed image of the Pelican Nebula is on the next web page. This photo below was taken with a Pentax 135mm f2.5 telephoto lens, Kodak 1000 film, and a 20 minute exposure.

Music:  Born in the USA...by Bruce Springstein