A few years back while I was frequenting a different school, I was a member of an Astronomy club. We would spend the most of a clear night observing the skies, and generaly learning about astronomy. I had a great time, while it lasted. We had a 14" schmidt cassegrain, if that means anyting to you. On occasion we took photos of what we were observing, we used an old "camera" (for lack of a better term. It's more a telescope in itself, can't remeber what it was called) to take them, and we'd developed them on site. At the end of the night, we'd all go home with our own picture. Ah, good times...

This one is the North America Nebula (aren't astronomers original?). It was taken on September 26th... damn, didn't write the year down... I'm gonna guess... 2003.

Here's a little description (from wikipedia):

The North America Nebula (NGC 7000) is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, close to Deneb (the tail of the swan and its brightest star). The remarkable shape of the emission nebula resembles that of the North American continent, especially along the southeast coast.

The North America Nebula and the nearby Pelican Nebula, (IC 5070) are in fact parts of the same interstellar cloud of ionized hydrogen (H II region). Between the Earth and the nebula complex lies a band of interstellar dust that absorbs the light of stars and nebulae behind it and thereby is responsible for the shape as we see it. The distance of the nebula complex is not precisely known, nor is the star responsible for ionizing the hydrogen so that it emits light. If the star inducing the ionization is Deneb, as some sources say, the nebula complex would be about 1800 light years distance, and its absolute size (6° apparent diameter on the sky) would be 100 light years.