Emission nebula
Pelican Nebula (IC5070)
In Cygnus (Cyg) • Magnitude 8.0 • 1.3 degrees
Open the free AstroPlanner with Pelican Nebula pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
The pelican-shaped companion to the North America Nebula, separated only by a dark dust lane.
Pelican Nebula at a glance
| Catalog IDs | I 5070 |
| Type | Emission nebula |
| Constellation | Cygnus (Cyg) |
| Right ascension | 20h 50m 49s |
| Declination | +44° 22' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 8.00 |
| Surface brightness | 15.0 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 80.0 × 70.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 89° |
| Best imaging months | Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov |
How to image Pelican Nebula
Pelican Nebula sits in the constellation Cygnus at right ascension 20h 50m 49s and declination +44° 22' 12". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window. As an emission nebula, Pelican Nebula responds very well to dual-narrowband filters under city skies.