NGC 7023 - The Iris Nebula
1 300 light years away in the constellation of Cepheus the Iris Nebula results from a massive hot young star sitting in an area of dust or dark nebulosity. The light is reflected off the dust, the predominant colour being blue. I was wanting to capture the outer darker nebular areas and have just about succeeded with a total of 6 hours of exposure. The image was captured over 2 nights and unfortunately I rotated the camera a little resulting in more cropping of the image than I would have liked. I was testing out a William Optics 110 FLT which performed extremely well producing very tight stars with minimal halos
Date: 19th and 20th October 2007.
Location and conditions: Taken from back garden. mag 5 sky with good transparency and moderate seeing.
Scope: William Optics 110 FLT triplet.
Camera: SXV H9.
Other equipment: Tak EM200, SXV guidehead, Astronomic type II RGB filters.
Capture and processing: I used a blue filter for the luminence on the basis that this is the predominant colour of the nebula. On reflection I don't think that this was sensible and probably lost some of the red tinge that should be visible through the nebula. Unbinned Blue 30x500 secs, binned2x2 red and green each 60x60 secs
Captured and combined with Maxim DL. Completed in Photoshop.