I was wondering how to start the description...
This time, I'm not presenting are rarely imaged object but one that most people know and probably even have taken images of. Therefore, apologies if I bore you. It's just like: when you go to Paris, you take a picture of the Eiffel tower. If you haven't taken one, you haven't been in Paris, and the fact that everyone else takes a photo of it, shouldn't stop you short of taking your OWN image.
(...know you know how I finally decided to start my description
).
NGC 7023 is most commonly known as the Iris nebula. At least to me, when I heard or read the name, it never crossed my mind that it's supposed to be the reference to the family of flowers. I suppose the reason is that in the English language the common names for biological entities are derived or identical to the Latin term while in German most things have a "translated" or common name. In German, the proper name would be the "Schwertliliennebel" (if German isn't your native language, you might find it easier to pronounce that having a good German beer - of course after drinking it).
Since you can easily find a lot of information about the nebula itself in online resources and textbooks, I'm not going into astronomical details.
For me capturing this target was actually not that easy. It required four nights to collect the total of 5 hours integration time. Usually the nights started well and at about midnight clouds came it. Effectively, I was just able to catch a full set of each color channel each night. Only the final night, Aug. 22nd, allowed imaging from dusk to dawn which finally let me collect sufficient L-data to work with the fainter dark nebulae.
So, before I talk too much without saying anything: as always, feel free to comment.
CS, Björn
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