Our fifth sky target, a wide field of 4 tiles in the constellation Cepheus with the Iris Nebula (NGC7023) and the Ghost Nebula (VDB141).
To date, it remains our most ambitious and complex project in terms of acquisition and processing. 

This constellation Cepheus in the Milky Way is sublime because it is dotted with bright and dark nebulae, which show superb colors and contrasts.
In addition, many molecular clouds (IFN) line the constellation forming coffee-colored arabesques.The full image corresponds to a mosaic of four tiles (with LRGB layers), which represents a total of 90 hours of exposures over approximately 35 nights, including 50 hours in Luminance (around 12 hours per tile) and 40 hours in RGB ( therefore 10 hours per tile). Two crops were produced on L'Iris and le Fantôme.

The mosaic was imaged from the remotely piloted observatory in Portugal by the AstroDarkTeam team composed of Stéphane Rolland and Pascal Gouraud.
Thanks again to the French Astro ARO team for the efficient and effective management of this superb site that hosts us. 

A bit of history and science...

The Iris Nebula is a beautiful reflection nebula. Radiation from stars near these clouds of gas and dust is not strong enough to excite atoms as in an emission nebula (like the Great Orion Nebula). On the other hand, the gas cloud reflects the light of nearby stars and diffuses it more particularly in the blue wavelength.
This nebula is located 1300 light years from Earth, with an apparent magnitude of 7.

The Phantom Nebula (VDB141) about 1500 light-years away, is both a reflection nebula with a small yellow-orange star which gives this beautiful hue to this object and a dark nebula around it, made up of draperies which gives this appearance ghostly spectral veil.

This region around these two objects is dotted with clouds of more or less dense and dark dust, which gives this color a little coffee in this area of ​​​​the Milky Way. Full black areas surround the Iris in particular. These molecular clouds (called IFN for Integrated Flux Nebula) are clouds of dust, which shine very weakly by diffusing the light emitted by our Galaxy!

The universe is truly amazing!. It is a source of ever-renewed beauty and of phenomena more and more surprising !

Technical Details
250 exposures for each field, of 3 minutes in Luminance, 215 exposures for each field, of 3 minutes, for the 3 RGB filtersTakahashi
TOA telescope 130mm in diameter, 1000mm focal length, Moonlite Nightcrawler 35 focuser/rotator
ASI2600MM monochrome camera cooled to -10 degrees, ZWO filter wheel with 36mm Chroma LRGB filters
Autoguiding optical splitter ZWO with Camera ASI290MM
EQ8-R MountSoftware Maxpilote,
The Sky X Pro, FocusMax V3, Pixinsight, Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop processing

Dates: between 28/05/2022 and 9/08/2022 (about 35 nights)