Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)  ·  Contains:  Erakis (μ Cep)  ·  IC 1396  ·  The star The Garnet Star
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Elephant's Trunk Nebula / IC 1396 in SHO, rdk_CA
Elephant's Trunk Nebula / IC 1396 in SHO
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Elephant's Trunk Nebula / IC 1396 in SHO

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Elephant's Trunk Nebula / IC 1396 in SHO, rdk_CA
Elephant's Trunk Nebula / IC 1396 in SHO
Powered byPixInsight

Elephant's Trunk Nebula / IC 1396 in SHO

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Description

While I definitely have far more experience with lunar / planetary / solar imaging, I do enjoy occasionally trying to do some deep-sky work as well. I'm not as good at it, but that never has stopped me before!

This data for this image of the Elephant's Trunk Nebula was acquired last summer, but I did not have much opportunity to process it until recently. The images were compiled over three separate sessions.  The data was collected through my Samyang 135 mm lens, set at f/2.8, mounted piggy-back on my 80 mm refractor (which was used for guiding). I used a QHY 5III 178c guide camera and a QHY 163M camera for narrowband imaging. Each exposure through the Ha, OIII, and SII filters (7 nm band pass) was 90 s for a total of over 13 hours of integration.

Though this was definitely one of my longest acquisitions, it was still tricky to extract faint detail in the outer regions of the nebula. Also, given my heavily light polluted skies in the San Francisco Bay Area, there were strong gradients in the OIII data. These were difficult to eliminate - I ultimately had to crop the image heavily to make it presentable.

Wishing all of you clear skies as we head into the winter season!

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Elephant's Trunk Nebula / IC 1396 in SHO, rdk_CA