NGC7000 and IC5070 - North America and Pelican Nebulae

I decided that I’d try out the Optolong L-Extreme F/2 filter on the Hyperstar last night. The data came out very clean overall. I think I saw some minor halos if I were really pixel-peeping, but they generally aren’t noticeable overall, and the filter yeilded some very nice data. I think I’ll just need to avoid bright stars in the frame in the future. I was able to capture about 6 hours of data, after I tossed out about 10 frames that were (slightly) washed out by early sunrise in the 4 o’clock hour and I also tossed out about 10 frames that were outliers with higher FWHM (> 2.6 or so) or Eccentricity (>.7 or so), which seemed to happen right around the meridian flip. The wind was pretty light last night and the windbreak easily did its job once again. I generally like the colors in a Foraxx Palette, so I decided to use that palette for this image. I was fairly surprised at how much the blues and greens dominate the image compared to the Pacman and Wizard Foraxx images I did previously, but every target is unique. The golds colors from this palette really help to enhance the features along the wall. I was very happy to catch all of the tiny little filaments and globules in the wall, which I haven’t imaged previously.

One feature in the image I found to be interesting is a star near the bottom center that seems to have a bit of a ring around it. At first I thought it could be a small PN of some sort, but according Franklin Marek’s “What’s In My Image” tool, it’s actually a Long-Period Variable Star called NSV13479. I’m not sure if the ring around the star is purely a halo remnant from the filter, or indeed a different chemical composition around the star. Perhaps it’s a mix of both. I’d love to hear more about the star from someone with more skill and technical expertise than myself!