IC 5070 - Pelican Nebula

This is my first image of the Pelican which I decided to do in narrowband (SHO) since it would take many nights to acquire the data including when the moon was out.  Located in constellation Cygnus and approximately 2000 light-years away the Pelican Nebula is separated from the more popular North American Nebula by a dark molecular cloud.  In astronomy it seems your either a well studied object or hardly studied at all, the Pelican is one of those well studied objects as light from newly formed stars is energizing the surrounding gas clouds of hydrogen and oxygen.

I especially like the gold front located on the lower right of the image. In this region Herbig-Haro objects have been detected as jets of gas are seen to be emanating from a protostar.  I imaged this over eleven nights but do to my situation I was only able to image for 2.5 hours each night.  I moved on to another object when this went out out of my FOV.  I managed to get a little over 5 hours on Ha, OIII, and SII for fifteen total hours.  I did have a couple of "Aargg" moments as one night I was not focused properly and another night it looked clear but very faint clouds moved in.  On third night my camera was making this very load noise but was cooling so I pretended it it was not making any noise (the fan was replaced six months ago).  The next day I decided to take the back cover off myself and discovered a bug decided to make a home there.  On the positive side, I purchased a Pegasus EQMOD direct cable from Highpoint Scientific and got it working.

Processing was the usual for me, no rhyme or reason just stumbling along. I am happy with how it turned out overall but I am not totally happy with the stars.  I tried many things to fix them but you adjust one thing at the expense of another.  I actually made a starless version with StarNet and may come back with another version when I get some time.

IC 5070 - Pelican Nebula

Home Monroe, CT
Date: 9-13-19, 9-15-19, 9-16-19, 9-17-19, 9-18-19, 9-19-19, 9-21-19, 9-22-19, 9-25-19, 9-26-19, 9-27-19
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm
f/7
Focal Reducer: Astro-Tech 0.8x Focal Reducer/Field Flattener for Refractor Telescopes
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 8x 1.25"
Filter: ZWO Ha, OIII, SII
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: QHY-5L-II-M attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope with Helical Focuser
Exposure: Ha 102 x 180s, OIII 100 x 180s, SII 107 x 180s
Gain: 139
Offset 21
Temp: 13 C
Post Processing: PixInsight, Photoshop, Lightroom, APT
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