Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)
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IC1396 Elephant's Trunk, niteman1946
IC1396 Elephant's Trunk
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IC1396 Elephant's Trunk

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
IC1396 Elephant's Trunk, niteman1946
IC1396 Elephant's Trunk
Powered byPixInsight

IC1396 Elephant's Trunk

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Description

The Elephant's Trunk nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust in the star cluster IC 1396 – an ionized gas region located in Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; commonly called the Elephant's Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch and bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star, just to the west (right) of IC 1396A.

The Elephant's Trunk nebula is thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity. (Source Wikipedia)

The image was captured with the Meade 12"LX200, using the Atik 383L+ mono (at F6.3).

CCD: A total of 16 subs with binning 1x1 and -10C at 10 minutes each (2.67 hr) on 12/04.

Processing was done with PixInsight. This is a very slight crop, and North is up.

This was simply a luminance image sans any filters, and was really a "throw-away" effort. But it actually came out pretty good. To do it right with this scope (small field of view and composition issues), I really need to try to mosaic multiple images. Not sure that I will.

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IC1396 Elephant's Trunk, niteman1946