I have been playing around with Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and GIMP this week.  It’s amazing what these programmes can do and highlights the massive data collected by a DSLR sensor and image potential hidden therein; it is as they say – a whole new ballgame.  At the same time I read this post on SGL which was not unlike my own actions a couple of nights ago http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/221951-ngc7000-almost-fell-off-my-chair/, except in my case I gave up, partially as I couldn’t see that I was getting anything and, to be fair, the cloud was rolling in!

I had just successfully imaged the M13 star cluster and seemed to have most things working quite well. I therefore thought I’d slew round to NGC7000 or the North American Nebula, as it is otherwise known, just to see if I could register the feature on camera.  The result after a few shots at varying experimental settings, rubbish.

NGC 7000 North American Nebula, or so I had hoped       WO GT81 + FF 2x40sec ISO 800

Which might have looked at least a bit like this had I persevered like Christopher Davenport did to get this great picture from a not dissimilar starting point;  OK looks like he knows what he’s doing + has a few more gizmos working and took a lot more images of greater exposure:

NGC 7000 in all its glory – I’ll get it yet!

Notwithstanding, I went back to my couple of shots at the top of this post – yes just two, too short and no darks – so I made up a couple – and put them through DSS and then GIMP. The result, though not as spectacular as Chris’s indicates that the nebula appears to be lurking at the top of the image afterall!