The Pelican Nebula

IC 5070 and IC 5067, known as the Pelican Nebula, comprise a region of ionized hydrogen gas about 1800 light years away in the constellation Cygnus. The glowing hydrogen in this emission nebula resembles a pelican, hence its name.

What this image shows

Look at the dark areas. Are they empty space behind the red gas, or dark dust in front of it? It's hard to tell, but in fact, they are dust in front of the gas.

The Pelican Nebula is close to the North America Nebula, and a wider view would show that both actually are part of the same cloud of glowing hydrogen gas. The obscuring dust gives them their shapes.


Exposure  • 18 hours
   ☞ Color: 6.4 hours (48 X 8 minutes) @ -10°C (August 2019)
   ☞ Hα: 11.7 hours (70 X 10 minutes) @ -15°C (August 2022)
 • Dusk flats
 • Camera position angle: 257°
Processing
  • With PixInsight:
   ☞ Calibration and star registeraton
   ☞ Subframe integration
   ☞ Histogram transformation
   ☞ Background noise reduction
 • Noise reduction and detail recovery in Topaz DeNoise AI
 • Final tweaking in Photoshop CS6
Date and Location  • August 29, 2019; August 3 & 12, 2022
 • Louisa County, Virginia, USA
Equipment
  • TMB-130SS APO refractor @ f/7 on an A-P 1200 mount
 • ZWO ASI-1600MC Pro color camera
 • Guided with a ZWO ASI-120M camera on a 60mm f/5 scope
 • Imaging and autoguiding with MaxIm DL 6.20
 • Automated image acquisition with ACP Observatory Control

Artistic Whimsy

In 2005 I imaged the Pelican with a telescope and camera having a smaller field of view that didn't show the entire head. I was struck by how a small region of the neck resembles an erupting volcano.

I opened the monochrome hydrogen-alpha image in Photoshop, rotated it, cropped it, and colored it reddish-orange. The region is outlined in yellow in the left image below, and the right image shows the resulting "volcano." You can see the full-size image here.

Updated May 23, 2023