Iris Nebula complete for now; starting Heart Nebula

Date:	September 2, 2025 at 09:13:33 MDT
Weather:	66°F Clear
Location:	Louisville, Colorado, United States

Last night I gathered my third night’s worth of data for the Iris Nebula. I’ll paste in the three results-so-far: one night, two nights, three nights:

Two nights of data definitely improved the image quality compared to one night, but adding the third night didn’t take it that much further, so I think I’ll stop here for now.

For each of the above photos, I took 45-second exposures at 60 gain, with the astro filter, from Monsters’ Clubhouse. I used MegaStack to remove obviously bad subs. Each photo has also passed through StellarStudio “auto” and been processed with the “auto” setting in Apple Photos. Night 1 is 481 subs, night 2 is 348 subs, night 3 is 184 subs; 1013 total. On nights 2 and 3, I began working on the Heart Nebula, which rises later than the Iris.

Here is the Iris Nebula final (for now); same as three nights’ data above, but cropped a bit.

For the Heart Nebula, here is two nights’ data, MegaStack-ed, StellarStudio “auto”, and Apple Photos “auto”.

I’m planning to get another night’s worth of data on the Heart tonight.