2024-08-01

Excellent conditions tonight. The last target on the RASCNGC list is NGC 7000, the North American Nebula.

I remember attempting to view this (2022-01-12) when I was first getting into star gazing and had no idea what I was doing. I was unable to see anything, and it set me on a quest to find out why. Three years later, after learning about narrowband filters, averted vision, and the importance of dark eye adaptation I have success!

10:35PM

I knew this target was going to have some unique challenges, this is partially why I saved it for last. One of the problems, other than its low surface brightness, is its size. Similar to the Rosette nebula, even with my ultra-wide eyepiece on the ST80 I could not fit the whole nebula in the FoV at once. This made it extra difficult to determine whether I was actually seeing the nebula because with so much of the nebula in the eyepiece at the same time I was missing the contrast with the background sky.

I set a goal to find the dark "patch" of NGC 7000, and sketch that. The dark patch would possibly represent the Great Lakes when looking at NGC 7000 as the shape of North America. This would give me a good way to confirm my observation while staying close to the center of the nebula.

I started setting up early to give my eyes extra time to dark adapt. Thankfully my neighbors went to bed early allowing my backyard to stay optimally dark.

After 35 minutes of careful focus with a hood over my head, I began to see "noise" in the eyepiece. It took another 10 minutes of viewing and panning around with AV before I located the shape of the "Great Lakes".

The nebulosity indicated on the sketch is very faint (as it was in the eye piece) and only represents the area around the Great Lakes as the nebula stretches much further than that. The Great Lakes dark patch is closer to the top of the sketch where the pattern of stars makes a "W" or an "M".

This completes my RASCNGC challenge! I'll have to decide what I want to pursue next.

[1] NGC 7000, North American Nebula (ID)

[2] ../images/2024-08-01_NGC7000.jpg