Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)  ·  Contains:  IC 1396  ·  The star Garnet Star (μCep)
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Elephant Trunk Nebula, Jeff McClure
Elephant Trunk Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

Elephant Trunk Nebula

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

First image from being in the desert for ten days. This is the Elephant Trunk Nebula (IC 1396) located in Cepheus in the northern sky, and with a wee bit of imagination you can see the elephant's head, body and the trunk. It is a star formation nursery about 2,400 light years from earth. The bright star in the upper left is the Garnet Star (Mu Cephei). This is a huge area of glowing hydrogen alpha, about 3˚ across. At the tip of the "trunk) a protostar has pushed the hydrogen cloud back and started the concentration wave that will lead to other stars being formed. Around the edges are more compression waves from previous starbirth.

This image is composed of about 30 120 second exposures with a Canon 60Da DSLR camera at ISO 800, taken through a Williams Optical Star-71 scope/five element lens. It was captured using Nebulosity 4 and finished in Adobe Lightroom.

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Elephant Trunk Nebula, Jeff McClure