Chaos overhead – the North America nebula

We had attempted to shoot the North America nebula last year, both from Paicines in September, as well as Panamint Valley in October. We hadn’t failed both times. Our camera had captures a million stars, but we were off-target so we had missed the classic nebulosity. It is supposed to be an easy target for newbies so we had to try again this year and I am happy to report that we got it this time.

The nebula is located in the Cygnus constellation (swan), but unlike Sadr region which lies at the heart of swan, we are now somewhere near the swan’s leg. Caldwell 20 and NGC 7000 are other identifiers of this emission nebula.

To north americans it looks like the continent of North America. My mom says it looks like a tired dog. I am with my mom on this one.

Here is the result after about 2.5 hours of Oxygen filter and 7.5 hours of Hydrogen alpha filter. The star intensity is reduced so as not to distract from the nebula itself. Bulk of the photography took place earlier in August. I ended up processing them towards later half of August.

What looks like a dark region (aka Gulf of Mexico) in the visible spectrum becomes a river of stars when imaged in infrared spectrum (link).

Written by locomotoring

September 2, 2026 at 10:29 am

Posted in Uncategorized

Locomotoring