NGC 7000 – The North America Nebula
By Rony De Laet
How many summer nights have I been looking to find this great nebula? I’ve tried with a 10cm f10 newton, a 20cm f10 dobson, an ETX 105 f14. But no result. This year I was armed with a widefield low budget SkyWatcher plus a 32mm Televue eyepiece and a Lumicon UHC filter. And there it was, a distinct glow with the shape of a continent! How beautiful, and finally I saw it in my sky. Here is the sketch. I also tried to render the effect of the UHC filter on brighter stars. Somehow this filter produces large halo’s around the brighter stars.
Date : September 15, 2007
Time : 21.30UT
Scope : Skywatcher 102/500
TV Plössl 32mm
Power : x16
FOV: 150′
Filter : Lumicon UHC
Seeing : 3.5/5
Transp. : 3/5
Nelm : 5.2
Sketch Orientation : N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with PhotoPaint, based on a raw pencil sketch.
Note:
Rony De Laet discusses his sketching method here: About the Drawings
His gallery can be found here: My EXT-105 Project
Rony,
An elegant sketch of NGC 7000. What I like the most about this is how you persevered until you got it. Nothing like hard won success.
Frank
Hi Rony,
hoestly, this is a really breath-taking sketch and your annotation speaks volumes!
I’ve also tried to capture this nebula with all sorts of telescopes and finally found it with 8×40 binoculars!
There is nothing like dark skies, a wide field of vision and a big exit pupil to find this object!
Sebastian