NGC 7023 - The Iris Nebula

A wide field image of the Iris Nebula and surrounding dusty regions of Cepheus.

 

This is an image totalling 41.15 hours of exposure time. This took months to capture, starting in June 2024 and finishing in August.

 

I started capturing this during very short nights, but captured a few hours at a time and eventually came to a total of 823 images at 180s each.

 

This region is so incredible to capture under dark skies. This dust is relatively faint and light pollution often is the biggest barrier when it comes to capturing these sort of images. I'm very fortunate to live under the dark skies that I have, it makes capturing faint light enjoyable.

 

Ironically, I didn't use a telescope for this, rather a macro lens. Yes. A lens that is designed to focus on very close up small things, I decided to capture something outside our own solar system and larger than the Earth. It worked out reasonably well though. I had to stop the lens down to around F4.5 (Or 5.6 I forget as I have to do it manually)

 

Capture details

 

- ZWO 533MC

- Astronomik L2 UVIR

- Canon 100mm L Macro lens

- Skywatcher Star Adventurer

- ZWO 715MC (guide camera)

- 32mm guide scope

 

- NINA

- PHD2 (ST4 guiding)

- APP (stacking)

- PS processing

 

823 x 180s = 41.15 total hours.

Done