IC 1396, Bruce
IC 1396, Bruce

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Description

A fascinating area of the night sky, the IC 1396 complex is a huge emission nebula located in the constellation Cepheus. Spanning an area wider than 6 full moons it includes supergiant stars, Bok globules and a dark nebula referred to as the “elephant trunk”. Perhaps the most notable feature of IC 1396 is the red supergiant Mu Cephei or Herschel’s Garnet Star. This massive red star is estimated to be 2.4 billion miles in diameter. To put this into perspective, if this supergiant was placed where our sun is located it would extend outwards to somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. This makes it one of the largest stars known in the terms of volume. Massive stars like Mu Cephei are destined to live fast, die young and will eventually end their “short” lives creating a supernova. In this image the Garnet Star is the bright orange star in the upper right quadrant. The Bok globules are the dark ghostlike clouds that seem to float across the nebulosity. The elephant trunk nebula is located at the six o’clock position extending vertically up toward the center of the nebula.

This image is a four panel mosaic using hydrogen alpha, oxygen 3 and sulfur 2 narrowband filters. Red, green and blue data was also obtained and used exclusively for star color.

Exposure: HaIII:SII:RGB = 580m:440m:460m:360m (total 4 panels). Total exposure: 30.6h

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Histogram

IC 1396, Bruce