Iris Nebula (NGC 7023)

NGC7023 (also known as the Iris nebula and Caldwell 4) is a bright reflection nebula located in the constellation Cepheus. Its unusual structure of interstellar gas and dust clouds evokes the image of an iris flower. The dusty blue petals of the Iris nebula spread out over six light-years.

The nebula shines at magnitude +6.8. Within the Iris itself, the dusty nebular material surrounds a hot young star (HD 200775) at magnitude +7.4.

This image dates from 2009 (As the long cloudy period continues without being able to acquire new exposures, I have decided to reprocess another image). The image is a pure RGB composition and has a relatively short exposure (7.5 h). It was acquired on two extremely warm nights: the temperature of the camera had to be set to -5 C.

Reprocessed from scratch with Pixinsight 1.8.9-1 (the first processing, which you can see on my website, was done with Pixinsight 1.5...).

The image is rotated 90 degrees (North is left).

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