Reflection Nebula NGC 7129 (on the left) surrounds over 100 stars that are only about 1 million years old. Its blue color comes from light filtering through dust that still surrounds the young stars. The red crescent shapes in it are Herbig-Haro objects, ionized hydrogen gas compressed by shock waves from energetic jets streaming away from newborn stars. NGC 7129 is dim; this image represents over 11 hours of exposure!

Open Cluster NGC 7142 (on the lower right) is twice as far away as NGC 7129. Its stars are estimated to be over 3 billion years old. Both are in the constellation Cepheus. A detail of NGC 7129 is shown below.

240 minutes L on 2015-11-16 and 168 minutes RGB on 2015-11-08 plus 256 minutes H-a using an Astrodon 3 nm H-a filter on 2012-11-21 (blended with L), all using a QSI 583 from northern New Jersey through an Astro-Physics 155mm refractor at f7.1. North is to the left. ©2016

Detail of NGC 7129 from the above image.