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NGC 7822 is an emission nebula located about 3000 light years away in the constellation Cepheus. As most of the emission nebulae, NGC 7822 is also a stellar nursery, where numerous, massive and hot stars are being formed. Once a star, or group of stars are formed, their stellar winds carve special shapes on the surrounding cloud of gas and dust. One of these shapes is the “Pillars of Creation”-like structures like the ones that can be seen on the right and lower sides of this image. The star that “carves” these structures (V747 Cep) is not in the image, but very close to its upper left corner. V747 is an 11.4 magnitude eclipsing binary, and it is considered to be the hottest star (surface temperature 45000K) within 1 kpc (3200 light years) of our Sun. An open cluster (Berkeley 59) is located on the upper left corner and it also belongs to the NGC 7822 complex.
Additional Information
Object
Name(s): NGC 7822
Type: Emission Nebula
RA: 00h 03m 36s
Dec: +68º 36’ 54”
Constellation: Cepheus
Size (arcmin): 60×30 arcmin
Magnitude: +8.0
Distance: 3000 ly
Image
Date: 2020-10-04 to 2020-10-09
Location: Curiosity2 Observatory, New Mexico Skies, Mayhill, NM, USA
Size (arcmin): 28×29 arcmin
Telescope: 24” (61 cm) f/6.5 Reflector
Camera: FLI PL16803 (4096x4096pix)
Guiding: Astrodon MonsterMOAG off-axis guider
Total exposure: 33 hours (Ha: 16h 30m; OIII: 7h 30m; SII: 6h; RGB: 3h)
Processing: CCDStack, Photoshop CC 2021