In early June 2025, the Game Shark Collective turned their collective optics toward one of the sky's most radiant reflection nebula: NGC 7023, commonly known as the Iris Nebula.

Dominated by a blazing blue reflection core, the Iris is usually imaged as a pure reflection object, glowing with scattered starlight from its central illuminating star, HD 200775.
Most photographers (and textbooks) will tell you: "There’s no Hα here. Just dark dust and faint light."
Well… we weren’t convinced.

Armed with over 26 hours of narrowband Hα integration and a fair share of caffeine, we dove into the data with a mission:
To question the common assumption that the Iris region lacks any significant Hα signal.

After careful continuum subtraction we encountered something subtle yet fascinating: A whisper of Hydrogen Alpha.

Faint, nebulous structure in the core emerged from the haze, hinting at low-level Hydrogen Alpha emission often drowned in the bright sea of reflected starlight.
It’s not dominant. It’s not screaming. But it’s there.

Using the Aladin software from the University of Strasbourg, we confirmed the Hα signal in this nebula via the North Sky Narrowband Survey (NSNS), seen below in Hα and RGB, courtesy of Stefan Ziegenbalg.

Hα :

RGB:

We've included an Hα animation below, fading between LRGB and the continuum-subtracted Hα signal, to show this gentle ghost glow in context.

Data Contributors: @jjpoole741, @Jeff Newgard, @Derek Morf, @Stefan Pommerin
Project Management: @Derek Morf
Image Pre Processing: @Jeff Newgard
Image Post Processing: @Stefan Pommerin & @Derek Morf
Description Author: @Stefan Pommerin & @Derek Morf

Thanks for looking & clear skies!