NGC7023, Iris Nebula (SGL5)

[SteveL]

This is one of a small handful of my own personal nemesis objects, i.e. ones that I image and it never ever goes quite right, something fails, weather lets me down, contrails, too breezy, sky too murky, etc... Anyway, despite this, I tried again at SGL5, hoping that with the new TS OAG I could get the longer subs required to really show this object at its best.

As it happens, the sky let me down evertually and the fog rolled in after just 90 minutes or subs The final image is a bit noisy, and maybe has some odd gradients at the lower and righthand edges, but it has shown me that the longer subs are the way to go for targets that dont oversaturate the CCD.

I will return to this target later in the year, and get the extended time that I so desperately require to lower the noise enough to show up the dusty clouds in the background.

Note that this image looks good on one of my monitors, "OK" on another, and doesnt show the dusty clouds at all on an uncalibrated monitor at all, so if all you see is the blue part and not the clouds, try turning the brighness up a a bit.

Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD

OTA: Skywatcher 190 MakNewt @ f/5.3

Guiding: TS OAG + Starlight Xpress Lodestar

Imaging: Starlight Xpress M25C + MaximDL, 6×900s, Hutech IDAS LPR (51 bias, 51 flats)

Orchestrated: CDD Commander

Stacked: DeepSkyStacker

(Click on image for larger version)

[Paxo]

Looks superb on my monitor Steve. Looked as if it was going to be a good un when the subs were rolling in (at 900 secs subs trickle rather than roll I suppose).

Steve..

[daz]

Show up well for me too...

That's looks like the start of another stonker!

[RobH]

Looks great on my monitor Steve.

Great image.

Rob

[Ford Prefect]

And me, Glad to see you managed to get the "nemesis object", I know you have been waiting a long time to get a good image of this target

Id say mission accomplished

[Whippy]

Finally, some time on the Iris . For just an hour and a half that's pretty darned good. Not sure how you found it but my stab at it last year was an absolute pig to process, yours looks just fine here .

Tony..

[SteveL]

The 15 minute subs helped, but not much... it was a horrible juggling act between getting the dusty bits to show up at all versus it all turning into 100% noise....

[Ant]

Looks good on my monitor Steve. It's a weird object, the browny area's of dust look quite unnatural to me.

I look forward to seeing this progress later in the year!

Cheers

Ant

[MartinB]

Finally!!! Looks like you got the processing balance spot on. That dust is really dim and you've captured the colour superbly. Like it a lot.

[ollypenrice]

Agreed. It is an absolute noise killer like certain other nemesis blue-and-dust horrors such as M78. (Graon, sob). You have the colour tickety-boo and just need (don't shoot me) even longer! Neat Image on the faint stuff would lop off fifteen to twenty hours of exposure time... Heh heh!

Runs for cover,

Olly

[SteveL]

Thats the point, the faint stuff has already had quite a bit of Noise Ninja applied... can you imagine what it would look like without that? uurrgghh....

[RichieJarvis]

Looking great Steve - glad I am not the only one who finds the Iris difficult!

Good job under difficult conditions as well

Cheers,

Richie