IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula (David McClain)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cepheus (Cep) · Contains: IC 1396

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula, David McClain

Powered byPixInsight

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

Powered byPixInsight

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

A radical stretch of the data. Stretched to bring out the back-illumination of the elephant trunk structure. In truth the data was almost entirely red channel from strong H-alpha. But looking at the NASA APOD from France got me thinking about how to enhance the back illumination and the streaming gas and dust. This works.

I find it interesting the way the human eye-brain system works... Color is an artifice of our minds. The direct image, dominated strongly by deep red color, made the pillar appear like a hole in the image with a strong highlighting of the rim. By modifying the presentation to lighter colors, our minds now begin to see a pillar instead of a hole, and the dark clouds above look like dark clouds, not holes.

We're toying with the mind, manipulating our perceptions of object completion and subjective contours. The effect is much like drawing a line on a sheet of paper with a pencil, then erasing a spot to make a gap in the line. Now place a coin over that gap, and the mind prefers to believe that the line is continuous beneath the coin. In the same way, by making the surroundings of the pillar brighter, the covering by the dark structure of the pillar allows our minds to believe that the bright illumination is continuous behind the pillar.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	927388
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information