The Cygnus Wall: A Celestial Spectacle in the North American Nebula
Behold the breathtaking "Cygnus Wall," a prominent feature nestled within the vast and intricate North American Nebula. This incredible image offers a glimpse into a stellar nursery, a region where new stars are born, sculpted by cosmic forces over eons.
Capturing the Cosmos
This stunning astrophotograph was brought to life by an OM System OM-1 camera paired with a Skywatcher 150p Quattro telescope. With a focal length of 540mm (achieved with a 0.9x field flattener), the photographer managed to capture remarkable detail. The challenging Bortle 6/7 skies were navigated over two nights, amassing an impressive total exposure of approximately 8 hours (480 x 30s exposures at ISO 1600).
No specific filters were used, allowing the natural light from the celestial objects to shine through. The atmospheric conditions were reported as above average, with temperatures ranging from 50-60°F.
The Processing Journey
The journey from raw data to this final masterpiece involved meticulous processing. The initial stack was performed in Siril, prioritizing roundness and employing background subtraction with a 2nd order polynomial. Further refinement occurred in GraXpert for cropping, AI background enhancement, and AI denoising. Siril was used again for color calibration, cropping, and applying various stretching techniques, including a generalized hyperbolic stretch and contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization. StarNet was utilized for star removal, followed by a final stretch of the background and an inverse stretch of the stars before recombination.
A note from the photographer: Some circular banding was observed during background subtraction. This might be due to the intensity of the background in this particular region. Research suggests dithering may help mitigate this artifact in future captures.
