Overview
The Iris is a reflection nebula, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by a central star. It’s six light-years across, and lies 1400 light-years from Earth. Its official name is LBN 487, while the stars clustered nearby are called NGC 7023.
Background
The Iris Nebula is one of the first targets I tackled seriously, back in 2021 using my Askar FRA400 telescope (scroll down to see the pic). It showed me that astrophotography from a city is perfectly achievable with the right approach. Since upgrading to an Askar 130PHQ I’ve been keen to have another crack at the target, using the bigger telescope, Optolong L-Quad Enhance filter, and new processing tools that are available in PixInsight.
Imaging details
| Date | 10 July – 21 August 2024 (six weeks) |
| Location | Bristol, UK (Bortle 8) |
| Telescope | Askar 130PHQ Flatfield Astrograph |
| Camera | ZWO ASI 2600MC-PRO |
| Mount | Sky-Watcher EQ6-R PRO |
| Guide | William Optics 50mm Guidescope with 1.25″ RotoLock; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini |
| Control | ASIAIR Plus |
| Software | PixInsight, Lightroom |
| Filters | – Optolong L-Quad Enhance (RGB): 360 x 5 minutes (30 hours) |
| Total exposure time | 30 hours |
| Image credit | Lee Pullen |
Processing
Imaging this during the summer, I was prepared for it to be a long-haul — the short nights here in the UK limit the number of the hours you can get in on any given night. In the end I spent six weeks on it, which netted me 30 hours of good quality data.
WBPP in PixInsight is nice and speedy since I upgraded my PC and switched to 5-minute subframes instead of 2-minute (resulting in fewer files that go into the integration pot).
The resulting integrated image showed promise, and some careful editing brought out more detail in the Iris itself, as well as the surrounding dust clouds, than I’d managed before. I’m taking that as a win!
See below for a full processing walkthrough video.
Source data
Previous version
I first imaged the Iris Nebula back in April 2021 using my wide-field Askar FRA400 telescope.
From the Reprocessing Bonanza 2022, version 2 uses exactly the same data as version 1, but with better processing tools and skills. This new version has much tighter stars that emphasise the faint nebulosity.
* April 2021
* Bristol, UK (Bortle 8)
* Telescope: Askar FRA400 f/5.6 Quintuplet APO Astrograph
* Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC-PRO
* Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G
* Guide: William Optics 32mm; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini
* Software: PixInsight, Photoshop, Lightroom
* Control: ASIAIR PRO
* 615 x 120 seconds
Total integration time: 20.5 hours
By Lee Pullen
Seestar S50
Here’s an image of the Iris Nebula taken from my city centre location using a ZWO Seestar S50 smart telescope.
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