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Photographed at Torrance Barrens Dark-Sky Preserve, near Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada(190 km by road north of Toronto)* Temperature 12 degrees C.
* Photographed while I was observing the Perseid meteor shower
Total exposure time: 24 minutes.This is a large and quite faint emission nebula and star forming region over 100 light-years across, located about 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus. It is energized by the bright, bluish central multiple star. The very small Elephant’s Trunk nebula (IC 1396A) is inside the dark elongated globule just to the left of centre.
From one web site: "The brightest star (38,000 times brighter than the Sun) ... [at the lower left edge of the nebula] is mu Cephei. It is a red supergiant star with a diameter larger than the orbit of Saturn, some 2536 times the diameter of the Sun. It is one of the largest stars we know of. Also called Herschel’s Garnet Star, mu Cephei is a variable star that varies in magnitude from 3.4 to 5.1 over a period of approximately 730 days."
For a view of this same region made with a 200 mm lens on July 23, click here:www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/19460552424/__________________________________________
Nikkor AF-S 80 - 400 mm f/5.68G ED VR lens on Nikon D810a camera body, mounted on Astrophysics 1100GTO equatorial mount with a Kirk Enterprises ball head
Twelve stacked frames; each frame:400 mm focal length; ISO 6400; 2 minutes exposure at f/7.1
(with LENR - long exposure noise reduction)
Stacked in RegiStar;
Processed in Photoshop CS6 (brightness, contrast, levels, colour balance, sharpening)
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