Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)  ·  Contains:  LBN 475  ·  LBN 487  ·  LDN 1168  ·  LDN 1170  ·  LDN 1171  ·  LDN 1172  ·  LDN 1173  ·  LDN 1174  ·  NGC 7023  ·  T Cep  ·  VdB139
NGC 7023 The Iris Nebula, Eshan Toorabally
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NGC 7023 The Iris Nebula

NGC 7023 The Iris Nebula, Eshan Toorabally
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NGC 7023 The Iris Nebula

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Description

The Iris nebula, also known as NGC 7023 and Caldwell 4 is a reflection nebula in the Cepheus constellation. The nebula is actually lit up by the star SAO 19158, which is magnitude 7. It is 1300 light years away and 6 light years across.

It was quite optimistic of me to try and image this from my Bortle 7-8 backyard, but worth a go! While the nebula itself is clear to see, all those gorgeous dust clouds surrounding it were extremely hard to capture from my location without a lot more integration time. I think I'll head to dark skies to capture this one next time!

It was also the first time I used different gain settings per filter to equalize the sub times, so gain 0 for the Lum filter and gain 200 for the Red filter, alongside unity (139) for Green and Blue. Much more practical in terms of the number of subs for Lum in particular.

Thanks for looking!

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