The Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula in the constellation Cepheus. The interesting colors and shape give it its namesake. Iris is estimated to be around 1300 light-years away with a comparatively small radius of 3 light-years. It is also a circumpolar object, meaning it rotates around the North Star, Polaris, throughout the seasons. Located near the likewise circumpolar stars Alfirkis and Alderamin it is a little difficult to find and image due do its relative dimness. It appears as just a darker region in the background of stars before image processing.

This image was made with a Nikon Z7 II and a Nikon 600mm f/6.3 PF lens at f/6.3. Total exposure time was 55.5 minutes via 111 30-second exposures at ISO 6400. Star tracking was with a Fornax LighTrac II. Images were aligned using Deep Sky Stacker with the resulting registered files stacked, stretched, and color corrected with using a custom Python algorithm. Some final image processing was done with Topaz DeNoise AI and Capture One.