The Iris Nebula NGC7023 from Eldorado Tx

I struggled with finding a target I wanted to image at the Eldorado Star party, finally settling on finishing the Iris (I started in Vermont) and then picking LDN1355/58 (helping hands) and then Barnard's galaxy.    The latter 2 I did not get anywhere near the amount of time as I need to make good images, but I'll post them anyway until I get to improve them.     The first image, the Iris, is the result of less than 4 hours of OSC imaging.   I rarely do OSC but due to the weather and travel plans in ELdorado, we only ended up with 2 nights of imaging so it was my best attempt at getting a full image in that short time.    

I shot this with a TEC140 scope reduced to 714mm with an Astro-Physics Quad Telecompressor and Reducer into an ASI2600MC one shot color camera.    I used an Astro-Physics 1100GTO mount with encoders unguided and 4 minute exposures.      The object is fairly bright so I have enough data to be presentable, I think.

NGC7023 also denotes an open cluster co-located with the nebulosity known as the Iris.    The Iris nebula itself is a reflection nebula which is illuminated by a central hot young 7th magnitude star HD200775.   The nebulas 18 arc minute size corresponds to 6 light years across and it is 1300 light years distant from our solar system.  The open star cluster also associated with NGC7023 is also called Collinder 427.