NGC7023 also known as the Iris Nebula is a bright reflection nebula in the Cepheus. The source of the reflection is from the open cluster in the center.
This nebula is bright at a magnitude of 6.8 and lies 1,300 light-years away.
NGC7023 was first discovered by William Herschel in 1794
Processing Info
Here I have 15 frames at 300 seconds each. I stacked them using BatchPreProcessing in Pixinishgt.
The following processes were performed in PixInsight:
- Dynamic Crop
- Automatic Background Extraction
- Background Neutralization
- Photometric Color Calibration
- Histogram Transformation
- Curves Transformation
- HDR Multiscale Transformation
- ACDNR (Noise Reduction)
- StarMask
Once I found what I liked, I saved the files and went to Photoshop, and ran Topaz AI DeNoise. This is an amazing plugin that works like magic.
Here you can see the area of the sky in Cepheus imaged.
Acquisition Data
- Telescope: Explore Scientific ED127 Air-Spaced Triplet Apochromatic Refractor
- Camera: ASI071MC Pro
- Guide Scope: Orion ST80
- Guide Camera: ASI290MM Mini. Dithering every image at 1 pixel each time.
- Mount: iOptron CEM60
- Software: NINA for image acquisition. PixInsight used for stacking and editing. Imported to Photoshop for final touchup and watermarking.
- Other Accessories: AstroZap Dew Heater, Explore Scientific 2″ Field Flattener, ZWO EAF Motorized Focuser.
- Filters: Optolong L-Pro 2″
- Exposure Time: 1 hour 15 minutes (15 X 300 seconds). Gain 90, -10°C bin 1×1
- Exposure Start: 01:03
- Date: June 26, 2020
- Location: Voorhees State Park, NJ, United States
- GPS Coordinates: Lat. 40.68187, Long. -74.89797
- Temperature: 64°F/17.78°C
- Bortle Dark-Sky Scale: 4
- Astrometry.net job: 3787782
- Avg. Moon age: 9.72 Days
- Avg. Moon phase: 73.87%
- RA center: 21h 1′ 31″
- DEC center: +68° 9′ 18″
- Orientation: 271.491 degrees
- Field radius: 0.494 degrees
- Magnitude: 6.8
- Resolution: 2873 x 1891
