IC1396A Elephant Trunk Nebula (Mike Cranfield)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cepheus (Cep) · Contains: B161 · HD205196 · HD205948 · HD206081 · HD206267 · HD206482 · HD239710 · HD239724 · HD239727 · HD239729 · IC 1396 · LBN 451 · LBN 452 · LBN 455 · LDN · LDN 1093 · LDN 1098 · LDN 1099 · LDN 1105 · LDN 1110 · LDN 1111 · Sh2-131

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IC1396A Elephant Trunk Nebula

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IC1396A Elephant Trunk Nebula

The Elephant Trunk Nebula is situated in the constellation of Cepheus and is about 2,400 light years away.

The nebula is illuminated by the very bright and massive star HD206267 which can be seen about a quarter of the way in from the right edge of the image and about half way up. This is in fact a triple star system, this image resolves each of the three constituent stars. The two closest form a spectroscopic binary star system, orbiting one another with a period of 3.7 days. The stellar wind emitted by this star system reaches a speed of 3,225 kps which is unusually fast. This wind causes compression in the surrounding nebulosity creating globules, such as IC1396A imaged here, in which star formation is occurring.

This image combines Hydrogen alpha, Oxygen III and Sulphur II narrowband data. I have used my new NBColourMapper script, developed in collaboration with Adam Block, to colour the image. The colours used are as follows:

Ha: Hue = 48.81, Saturation =0.871
OIII: Hue = 199.0, Saturation = 0.900
SII: Hue = 340.1, Saturation = 0.964

Histogram adjustment was used to balance the three channels and then the image was stretched using GHS. The stars are synthetic RGB created from Ha and OIII data using PixInsight's SpectroPhotometricColourCalibration tool in Narrowband mode.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8491322
PixInsight job	I8H1IE8WL2E5E4RDUNN91KNIS8T11XVC
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	21h36m18s.308
RA (top/left)	21h31m01s.557
RA (top/right)	21h41m38s.110
RA (bottom/right)	21h41m43s.429
RA (bottom/left)	21h30m50s.393

Dec (center)	+57°31′02″.70
Dec (top/left)	+57°01′47″.57
Dec (top/right)	+57°02′20″.93
Dec (bottom/right)	+57°59′24″.21
Dec (bottom/left)	+57°58′55″.16

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IC1396A Elephant Trunk Nebula

IC1396A Elephant Trunk Nebula

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IC1396A Elephant Trunk Nebula

IC1396A Elephant Trunk Nebula

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