Oh boy, this was a tough one. I thought surely 18 hours would be enough integration time, but this was extremely challenging to process. The gradients were difficult to edit, and I had to be pretty deliberate and heavy-handed in that regard. I was, however, pretty happy with the detail and colour in the core of the Iris and hardly did any sharpening there.
NGC 7023 is a reflection nebula - light from the star HD 200775 is reflected and scattered by nearby dust, appearing predominantly blue (a similar process causes the sky above us to appear blue as well). In addition to the blue glow, though, there are reddish areas (which appear more yellow/orange in my image) which indicate the possible presence of hydrocarbons:
I would strongly encourage anyone interested to read
this excellent Cloudy Nights post by D. Heilman (
@dheilman) for more information about the reddish area, and Iris in general.
I'm glad I was ultimately able to make something of this image, and I might revisit the area with a wider FOV in the future, as it's such a gorgeous area (see
@wsg's recent, stunning
NGC 7023 image) and perhaps I might chance a UV/IR filter to pass more of the fainter light, though that might be asking for trouble from Bortle 7...
REFERENCE:Subedi, Anil & Chaudhary, Ashok & Chaudhary, Keshab & Khatiwada, Kushal & Kandel, Ramchandra & Upadhyay, Devendra & Yadav, Shiv & Jha, A.. (2023). Dust properties around NGC 7023 nebula in interstellar medium using IRIS, AKARI, and WISE survery. Himalayan Physics. 10. 40-50. 10.3126/hp.v10i1.55277.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371255787_Dust_properties_around_NGC_7023_nebula_in_interstellar_medium_using_IRIS_AKARI_and_WISE_survery
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