NGC 7000, the North America Nebula

The dense star clouds of Cygnus can be explored for night after night, giving glimpses of distant mysteries that no man will ever fully understand. One of them is the huge. dim cloud of glowing hydrogen called the North America Nebula. Just to its right and a little below you can see the neighboring Pelican Nebula, with the two separated by a dark lane. In reality all the nebulae in that region are part of a single cloud, their apparent shapes defined by intervening clouds of dark dust which block our view of what lies beyond. The brilliant star on the right is Deneb, one of the most intrinsically bright stars visible to the naked eye.

I made this wide-field image with an 85mm Olympus Zuiko prime lens stopped down to f/4, which accounts for the diffraction spikes visible around the brightest stars.