The Pelican Nebula is a combination of hydrogen clouds with dust and molecular clouds in constellation Cygnus. It is associated to the well known North America Nebula (NGC 7000). Both are about 1800 light years away and contain may young stars.

Acquisition Details

Scope: Borg 90FL/500 with 1.08x Flattener
Filter: IDAS NBZ
Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro
Mount: Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro
Guiding Scope: MiniBorg 50
Guiding Camera: ZWO ASI 290MM
Guiding Software: PHD2
Acquisition Software: N.I.N.A.
Light Frames: 60x300sec in two nights
Flats, Dark Flats, Bias, Darks
Camera settings: Gain 100, Offset 20
Bortle 4-5, 90% moon
Acquisition Dates: August 24 and 25 2021

Processing

Imaging & Stacking: PixInsight
Denoise: Topaz AI Denoise
Star halo removal: Gimp

See here a few cops from that picture and some variations in color created via processing the image slightly differently.

In the following I reduces color saturation and set the black point a bit differently.

In the following series I shifted the red more to the to an orange tone.

For the following series I changed processing a bit. I did not split the color channels and used starnet++ only to provide a template for the background in AstroSwell’s De-emphasizer script, which is based on Adam Block’s halo mask method to reduce (de-emphasize) stars.

Processing

Imaging & Stacking: PixInsight
Denoise: Topaz AI Denoise
Star halo removal: Gimp

1. Dynamic crop
2. Dynamic Background Extraction
3. Photometric color calibration
4. Histogram Transformation
5. Starnet to create a starless image
6. AstroSwell StarDe-emphasizer
7. Curves
8. Color Saturation
9. Curves
10. LocalHistogramEqualization
11. Curves
12. Denoise using Topaz
13. Script DarkStructureEnhance
14. Assign ICCProfile