IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula (MSFFT)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cepheus (Cep) · Contains: B160 · B161 · B162 · B163 · B365 · B367 · Erakis · Erakis (μ Cep) · IC 1396 · LBN 451 · LBN 452 · LBN 455 · LBN 456 · LBN 457 · LDN · LDN 1085 · LDN 1087 · LDN 1088 · LDN 1090 · LDN 1092 · LDN 1093 · LDN 1095 · LDN 1098 · LDN 1099 · LDN 1101 · LDN 1102 · LDN 1103 · LDN 1104 · LDN 1105 · LDN 1106 · And 17 more.

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

Version B: Starless (mostly) "Natural" Color
Version A: SHO/(sort-of) Hubble Palette

IC 1396, the Elephant Trunk Nebula, captured over 24.5 hours through Ha, Sii, and Oiii narrowband filters. Pre-processing and linear processing in Pixinsight using DBE and Masked Stretch. Non-linear processing includes SHO Combination using PixelMath, followed by Curves Transformation to de-emphasize Ha in green channel, increase contrast, reduce magenta hue in stars, and boost color saturation. Resampled for web viewing.

The narrowband approach really makes a difference in my suburban skies and makes the data fairly clean. This was also one of my first projects with an OAG rather than a guidescope which made a huge difference. I think I may have generally minimized flat fielding issues, but the new challenge given the new imaging train is field flattener spacing adjustment. The target itself was one of my first to really fill the entire field of view which also made DBE and background neutralization a new adventure as well.

This was a fun image to capture, with a lot of different iterations I worked through. While the standard SHO/Hubble Palette approach turned out fine, I did end up with some extra magenta around the edges. However, trying to deal with that ended up impacting the overall color of the image so I just accepted it mostly as is. Finally, using Starnet for the first time was different - it worked pretty well, though the bright star at bottom left didn't get removed nicely (version B).

Thanks for looking!

Final
Original
B

B

Description: Different processing using "natural" (intentional quotes) color and Pixinsight's included Starnet for starless image.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6037051
PixInsight job	7XZNA889AHHZG77U0TLTM4A6I9DP1XP7
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	21h39m01s.30
RA (top/left)	21h31m08s.47
RA (top/right)	21h33m12s.22
RA (bottom/right)	21h46m22s.12
RA (bottom/left)	21h45m20s.74

Dec (center)	+57°29′14″.9
Dec (top/left)	+58°47′21″.0
Dec (top/right)	+56°01′24″.0
Dec (bottom/right)	+56°09′21″.8
Dec (bottom/left)	+58°55′59″.9

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IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

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IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

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