10/5/04 NGC7023 The Iris Nebula

A beautiful blue reflection nebula surrounded by lots of dusty clouds. It's easy to see why this object has been named after the flower. I spent a lot of time processing this one to try to bring out the dust clouds. I still have some collimation issues and I had some blooming issues with the bright center of this object, but overall I'm happy with the result. The image was taken with 5 minute sub-exposures, which are making a huge difference in the dept of my images as compared with the 1 minute exposures I was typically using before I got my guiding issues worked out.