The North American Nebula

Photograph taken from our Backyard using
 a Canon 400D DSLR camera with a  telephoto lens 
at 90 mm. mounted on a NEQ6 mount.
Twelve 30sec light frames, 3 flat frames and
three dark frames were stacked using DeepSkyStacker
 and then enhanced using Photoshop.

After Midnight, Suffolk County Council turns off the majority of street lights in our town and the night sky comes to life!

The Milky Way is clearly visible from our backyard and is very bright as it runs through the constellation Cygnus the swan. (As my old Dad was often heard to say......... "Swans, nice birds but dangerous"!)

The night before last was very clear with transparent skies and I decided to try and capture an image of NGC 7000, The North American Nebula. The Moon was up and just after full, so I was grateful that it was reasonably low in the sky and partially hidden by shrubbery. Strong moonlight presents considerable problems when imaging dim nebulosity.

The North American Nebula is quite large, more than four times the size of the full Moon, but its surface brightness is low.  Seeing it without binoculars or specialist filters can be extremely difficult if not impossible from most locations.

The Nebula is part of an ionised cloud of interstellar Hydrogen. The shape of the nebula ie.as the North American Continent, is sculpted by interstellar dust which absorbs starlight and lies between us and the ionised Hydrogen.  The Hydrogen is being ionised by the stellar wind from a large star (possibly Deneb, alpha Cygni).

The orange supergiant star Xi Cygni, seen more or less at the centre of my photograph is an interesting star now in the latter stages of its existence.  Having depleted its hydrogen fuel it is now fusing  helium to create carbon and oxygen. Someday it will either puff up and create a large planetary nebula and a white dwarf star or conversely explode as a core collapse supernova.  Either way we will be unaffected at our safe distance of approximately 12000 light years.

The open cluster M39 can be seen upper left, for my image of this cluster follow the link:
http://george-artcabinedujardin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/m39-in-constellation-cygnus.html

For more information regarding Xi Cygni follow the link:
http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/xicyg.html

Credits: Jim Kaler, Flickr and Astrometry solver.

The Image field contains:

NGC 7071, NGC 7024, NGC 7058, NGC 7093, NGC 6996, NGC 7011, NGC 6991, NGC 6989. NGC 7054, 
NGC 7044, IC 5067, IC 1363. ξ Cyg, ν Cyg', ρ Cyg ,σ Cyg, 63Cyg, 59Cyg, 57Cyg, 55Cyg, 56Cyg, 68Cyg
61Cyg, 71Cyg, 51Cyg, 60Cyg, NGC 7067, NGC 7000, NGC 7027, NGC 7026, NGC 7031, NGC 7082, NGC 7092
NGC 6997, NGC 7086, NGC 7062, NGC 7048, NGC 7039, IC 5076, IC 1369, IC 5068, IC 5070, IC 5117,