Iris Nebula in Cepheus, old DSLR + 8" newt (frenchyarnaud)

Iris Nebula in Cepheus, old DSLR + 8" newt

It had been 11 weeks since the last day without rain and clouds in Dorset, England! Finally an unexpected clear night on Nov 24th. For under-equiped beginner me, NGC7023 is kind of a big deal, what I would consider an advanced target, notoriously tricky. The moon was almost full, which made things even worse but after 2 months waiting for a clear night, I could not really pass it. I went all in with calibrations frames (almost 200) and took much shorter than usual subs, but more of it (165 * 120s while usually I'd go with 50 or 80 * 300s), to try and swamp the moon and light pollution gradient. I still had to resort to severe cropping in post because there was no way to really get rid of the gradient. The one good thing on my side is that the temp was just above freezing, and the little fan mod I made on the dslr allowed me to keep the sensor around 6C, which has a terrific impact on SNR compared to without the fan when the sensor temp climbs to 20C above ambient. All in all, it all went as planned.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

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Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
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