NGC 7023 is a reflection nebula--a cloud of gas and dust reflecting the light of very bright, blue star--visually located within the constellation Cepheus.

it is located about 1300 ligyht years away from us, and is about six light years across.

I have photographed this nebula once before, 21 years earlier. To see the benefit of better equipment; better software; better location and bettr skills, click here

Technical Information:

L:R:G:B: 582:225:210:260 (a total of more than 21 hours of light-frame exposure time); here's a chart showing the various subexposures I used in the image:

Luminance: 35 fifteen-minute and 19 three-minute
Red: 15 fifteen-minute
Green: 14 fifteen-minute
Blue: 13 twenty-minute

Equipment: RC Optical Systems 14.5 inch Ritchey-Chretien carbon fiber truss telescope, with ion-milled optics and RCOS field flattener, at about f/9, and an SBIG STX-16803 with internal filter wheel (SBIG filter set), guided by an SBIG STX guider, all riding on a Bisque Paramount ME German Equatorial Mount.

Image Acquisition/Camera Control: Maxim DL, controlled with ACP Expert/Scheduler, working in concert with TheSky X.

Processing: All images calibrated (darks, bias and sky flats), aligned, and combined in Pixinsight. Color combine in Pixinsight. Some finish work (background neutralization, color calibration, gradient removal, NoixeXTerminator, BlurXTerminator) done in Pixinsight; some finish work (LRGB combination, contrast and saturation adjustment) was done in Photoshop CC.

Location: Data acquired remotely from Sierra Remote Observatories, Auberry, California, USA.

Date: Images taken during many nights in August and September of 2025. Image posted December 24, 2025.

Date: Image scale of full-resolution image: 0.56 arcseconds per pixel.

Seeing: Generally fair to good

CCD Chip temperature: -25C

Copyright 2025 Mark de Regt