Pelican Nebula

The Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) is a large emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus. This HII region is associated with the North American Nebula (NGC 7000). Located near the blue-white supergiant star Deneb, these two nebulae would belong to the same gas and dust complex. The star Deneb, one of the largest knowns in the Milky Way, would illuminate by its intense radiation the gas clouds of this region.

IC 5070 is much-studied because of an active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from energetic young stars is causing an ionization front to gradually advance outward. Dense filaments of cold gas still remain. In millions of years from now, as the movement of gas and stars, this nebula will no longer resemble a Pelican.

This picture respects the Hubble Palette version (SHO): H-Alpha mapped to green, SII mapped to red and OIII mapped to the blue channel. While the colors in this image are not the true colors, the narrowband filters were used to create the nebula color.

To capture this image, a Planewave CDK17 telescope (432mm) was used, paired with a FLI Kepler 4040 CMOS camera and Astronomik Deep-Sky SHO filters. A total of 540 frames, amounting to 9 hours of exposure, were stacked. Post-processing techniques were applied to adjust contrast and levels, bringing out subtle details in the nebula.

I have already processed a wider filed of view of this area here.