On Monday June 25th. I was fortunate to be blessed with a very clear sky, and as I was on holiday. I decided to meet up with Paul Canon, for a night of imaging.
We travelled to our new location, Teggs Nose country park, which is only three miles from where I live. But what a difference it makes. The skies are dark, with magnitude 5.1 stars visible to the unaided eye.
I wanted to test my little 2.5" William Optics Zenith Star 66SD, to see how good it is for CCD and DSLR imaging using my modded Canon 1000D. I will be using this telescope from now on, because it is easy to handle but also. Doesn't require collimation as my Orion 254mm f4.8 does.
I decided to image NGC 7000 on that night. NGC 7000 or The North America Nebula. Is a huge hydrogen rich nebula, situated to the upper left of the bright star Deneb. It is huge, and only suitable for imaging with a DSLR or a CCD camera, with a big sensor. And short focal length refractor or camera lens.
I used my little APO and Canon 1000D and took various exposures, to see how long I could go, before my skies were to bright.
The image here is the result of many short exposures with the longest, 300 seconds.
But I wish we could have their summers and their temperatures.
Details.
| Observation data: J2000.0 epoch | |
|---|---|
| Type | Emission |
| Right ascension | 20h 59m 17.1s[1] |
| Declination | +44° 31′ 44″[1] |
| Distance | 1,600 ± 100 ly (675 ± 30 pc)[2] |
| Apparent magnitude (V) | 4 |
| Apparent dimensions (V) | 120 × 100 arcmins |
| Constellation | Cygnus |
