The Iris Nebula is a blue reflection nebula in Cepheus 1300 light-years from Earth. Within it, we see a hot newborn star, HD2000775, of 10 solar masses emerging from a massive dust cloud. It's bipolar outflow that occurred when it formed from an accretion disk have cleared a surrounding bi-lobed zone measuring 5 x 2.5 light years. The surrounding dust scatters the star's visible light, just as our atmosphere scatters sunlight in the sky, rendering the nebula sky blue. In filaments above the star, dust is converting invisible ultraviolet light into visible red light by photoluminescence. The blue nebula is surrounded by dark obscuring clouds of dust. While the Iris nebula is often referred to as NGC 7023, this is not correct. NGC 7023 refers to the associated open star cluster to the west. The correct designation for the nebula itself is Lynds Bright Nebula (LBN) 487.  The dust cloud surrounding the nebula is Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1174. The nebula was named the Iris Nebula by Daphne Hallas because when her husband Tony Hallas showed her an image of it taken on film, its deep blue color reminded her of an iris.

Exposures: L:R:G:B = 225:115:115:115 minutes = 9 hours, 30 minutes total exposure, all unguided.