The big question mark of Cepheus, about 3,000 light-years away, and the widefield counterpart to the M51 "question mark" a few galleries over. The curl is NGC 7822, a ring of glowing hydrogen blown open by the young cluster Berkeley 59 — home to BD+66 1673, one of the hottest known stars in the solar neighbourhood at around 45,000 K. The dot is Cederblad 214, the dense southern half of the complex, whose pillars and dark bays trace out the "Teddy Bear" the capture rig was pointed at. Together the pair is catalogued as Sh2-171, a star-forming region some 40 light-years across whose newest stars are still eroding the clouds that made them.

Shot from the starfront remote site in Texas over twenty-two nights, from late August to mid September 2026: sixty and a half hours of narrowband, with nearly twenty-two hours of RGB for natural star colour. Rendered in a Foraxx palette, processed starless with the RGB stars added back, drizzled 2× and finished in Photoshop.

• Coordinates: RA 00h 01m 47s, Dec +66° 34′ 08″ (Cepheus)
• Optics: William Optics RedCat 61 (300 mm, f/4.9)
• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro, ZWO EFW, EAF, CAA rotator
• Filters: Hα / OIII / SII narrowband; R / G / B
• Integration: 83h 11m — Hα 17h (102 × 600″), OIII 26h 30m (159 × 600″), SII 17h (102 × 600″), R 6h 29m (32 × 120″ + 65 × 300″), G 8h 02m (31 × 120″ + 84 × 300″), B 7h 20m (30 × 120″ + 76 × 300″), L 50m (30 × 100″)
• Captured: 2026-08-26 to 2026-09-16