IC 1396, Elephant's Trunk Nebula, 9 Aug 2012 (David Dearden)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)

IC 1396, Elephant's Trunk Nebula, 9 Aug 2012

Found the Elephant's Trunk by first finding µ Cephii (the Garnet Star), then using the U19 eyepiece to move to HIP 106886, which is actually a close cluster of stars easily recognized. Installed the camera and focused, then got the FOV in AstroPlanner oriented to match the camera. From there I could easily line things up. A bit of gusty wind and a bit of smoke tonight, but conditions are so far pretty good. Degraded with wind later.

Date: 9 Aug 2012
Subject: IC 1396, Elephant’s Trunk Nebula

Scope: AT8IN + 0.5x Antares telereducer

Filter: none
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: Orion ST80 + 0.5x Antares telereducer + DSI Ic + PHD

Camera: DSI IIc

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.0

Exposure: 2x300 s + 44x180

Stacking: Neb 3, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack

Processing: crop, color balance, digital development w/ sharpen, levels & curves, saturation boost in N3. GreyCStoration to denoise layer. Astronomy Tools color blotch, deep space, space noise reduction, in denoise layer. Horizontal band noise reduction to sharp layer. Layer mask denoise reveal-all layer on top with Gaussian blur; flatten, enhance DSO/reduce stars, select stars & star size reduction, saturation boost all in CS5.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6652238
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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IC 1396, Elephant's Trunk Nebula, 9 Aug 2012

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