The Iris Nebula - LRGB

[Mr_42tr0nomy]

Greetings!

I am here posting again so soon due to the clearest bout of dark skies in my life. Nearly 4 weeks straight of clear nights up here in the Rockies. It is our dry season here (finally) which is much dryer than Denver has been around this time in the past. I have been taking full advantage as I have collected over 150 hrs of data on three objects. A personal record I dont intend on beating, haha!

Anyways, this is the Iris Nebula. Ive grabbed data on this target only one time before... about 3 years ago. My wife, Sarah (gf at the time) and I had planned a camping trip in the smokies. I brought all my AP gear just to realize that bortle 1 skies dont matter during a full moon. I clearly hadnt thought out the timing of our trip (we all make mistakes, right?). Since then I have always wanted to do a better job. It is such an intriguing target to me. One of the prettiest up there.

I spent the past two weeks collecting 31 hours of luminance data while my buddy shared some of his RGB data to save some time. This is 40 total hours of data in bortle 4.5 skies.

Clear skies,
Teagan

AT8RC
CEM60
ASI1600MM-pro
Astrodon L, Chroma RGB
QHY5;L-ii guide cam

294x600s subs

Location: Pine, CO

 

 

[Brian Maurer]

Very nice, but it looks like you have a lot more in there that you could pull out.

[vlaiv]

That is just exceptional!

I love the depth and 3D feel of it.

[JamesF]

It is outstanding.  If there's one criticism I have it's that there's so much detail there, it's stopped looking like an iris.  Which is hardly a criticism after all :)

James

[discardedastro]

Absolutely wonderful - I just started capturing data for this (a very cloudy night) and now I know what sort of image I'm aiming for. The fine detail in the inner clouds is superb.

[Mr_42tr0nomy]

49 minutes ago, Brian Maurer said:

Very nice, but it looks like you have a lot more in there that you could pull out.

I thought the same. I think by lightening the image or increasing the mid tones would bring it out but after several tries to get a decent balance I decided that the less stretched version looked better. But now I’m re thinking this.. 

[Mr_42tr0nomy]

20 minutes ago, JamesF said:

It is outstanding.  If there's one criticism I have it's that there's so much detail there, it's stopped looking like an iris.  Which is hardly a criticism after all

James

Hahah you know I thought the same! I’m like this doesn’t look much like an Iris anymore.. but at the same time there IS that detail in there. Maybe other people fail to pull it out? Maybe I over HDR’d it. Maybe an in between? Thanks