I decided to go after the north america nebula in cygnus last weekend. we had a single clear night, and I was able to pull in about 6 hours of data across Ha, Sii, and Oiii using the Explore Scientific ED102 APO and my ZWO ASI 1600MM Pro camera. It has still been quite warm in the evenings, so I’ve had cooling turned down only to -15c rather than -20c.
This target would make a nice mosaic candidate given its size, but I fit what I could with this focal length and camera pairing.
See below for the individual channels and balancing I used to combine into a SHO image in PixInsight.
Sii data – stretched with DBE applied Ha data – stretched with DBE applied Oiii data – stretched with DBE applied
From here, I mapped the data into RGB using R=Sii, G=Ha, B=Oiii. I applied some background neutralization and adjusted curves to produce the final image below.

The imaging session details are below:
imaging camera | ZWO ASI 1600MM Pro |
guide camera | ZWO ASI290mm Mini |
mount | Skywatcher EQ6-R pro |
telescope | Explore Scientific ED102 APO |
exposure settings | gain 139 exposure 180s |
stacking | 43 lights – Optolong 7nm Ha 42 lights – Optolong 6.5nm Sii 36 lights – Optolong 6.5nm Oiii additional calibration for each channel 30 darks 30 flats 30 dark flats |
processing | PixInsight |