NGC7023, Iris Nebula (SGL5)
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)
Posted by Steve under Astronomy | Comments Off on NGC7023, Iris Nebula (SGL5)
