Berkeley 59 and NGC 7822 are located in the constellation Cepheus at a distance of about 3,300 light-years from Earth.

Only recently released,  this new infrared image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows what appears to be a blossoming rosebud with the Berkeley 59 cluster seen as the blue dots to the right of the image. The red glow surrounding these young stars is warm dust being heated by the hot stars.  The green material is from heated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, molecules that can be found on Earth in barbecue pits, exhaust pipes and other places where combustion has occurred.

Red sources within the green nebula indicate a second generation of stars forming at the surface of the natal cloud, possibly as a consequence of heating and compression from the younger stars. A supernova remnant associated with this region, called NGC 7822, indicates that a massive star has already exploded, blowing the cloud open in a “champagne flow” and leaving behind this floral remnant. Blue dots sprinkled throughout are foreground stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE TEam