I have done a previous such comparison of NIR vs. VIS imaging using my new(ish) QHY5III462C.  But unlike the last one of the IRIS's HD 200775 Herbig Ae/Be star, I since learned in my travels via Aladin more and more concentrated star clusters of the type that I am interested in doing more detailed spectroscopy.  Turns out the Elephant Head/Trunk IC 1396A is one of those hyper concentrated areas.  There are multiple dozens of such stars identified within just the area I show in this post.  This suits my setup, as it is, since the camera sensor is quite small.  So the more stars I can pack into one image, the more photometry I can hack at the same time.  But before I discuss the details of the specific imagery I am posting here, I want to discuss those stars that are of interest to me.  So if you could care less about star formation, etc., please skip over the next paragraph.

The objects in which I am interested are stars in the formative stage of their lives.  In particular, those that are closely associated with, or entirely embedded in their clouds of origin.  Reason being is that I have hope someday of detecting action on rather short time scales.  I am just too old to wait for a variable that winks once every 5 years!  And one can imagine many reasons that these stars may show variability on short time scales because they should be undergoing dynamic processes and contain such structures as circumstellar disks, protoplanets, stellar pardners , outbursts and just simply movement within their dusty cocoons, to name a few.  As it turns out, the reason so many such stars are identified within this small region is because this area has been studied in quite some detail.  For those interested in one very interesting and very approachable study, here is the reference: Mid-Infrared Variability of Protostars in IC 1396A, M. Morales-Calderón et al 2009 ApJ 702 1507.  Link: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/702/2/1507  Reading just the abstract is fun stuff.  They got two weeks on Spitzer, using the mid IR camera. They did a twice daily cadence for the dozens of stars of interest for 14 days.  But the coolest to me was the 7 hour "long stare" with a cadence of 12 second exposures.  And yes they did see repeating actions on some of these stars under such circumstances!  So yes I do have some hope...  But wait, I don't own a Spitzer.  How much is one of those?  In any case, time to dash my hopes as I will describe what my images posted here tell me.

I mastered the mouse over method for these images.  In fact you have choices.  I chose 3 VIS images to compare.  One is the very poor QHY5III... image that I made the same night I collected the NIR data.  It is of just 10 subs at 300 sec.  Seeing was particularly bad that night because of smoke.  So if you think that the NIR image is that much better, beware that I got a whole 20 subs in at 360 second for the NIR image.  For a better comparison, I added a heavily cropped 1396A VIS image (actually both Lum and Color) from my rather huge 6 panel IC 1396 composition that I posted last week.  In this post, the front page image is the color VIS RASA image.  But you can choose a B/W version of that or the bad VIS QHY5III image if you wish.  Yes you will notice that some very few stars are evident in the NIR that are not in the VIS images.  In the starfields, you will also notice some stars that disappear in the NIR.  Hot blue stars often simply go away in IR.  They just don't radiate as well in the IR since they are just too hot.  UV, yes, IR no.  While I think it is cool to see stars in the IR that you can't see in the VIS, I am really most interested in stars that I can see in both.  That offers photometry at different wavelengths and I think that could provide some differentiating information.  In general, I was rather underwhelmed by the data.  My 5 inch Mak/Newt is not up to the task.  I intend to get a 10 or 12 inch imaging Newtonian and a much better mount (and observatory in a clear location) to do the work I want too.  With the bigger "eye" I am sure to pick up still more stars, or be able to do much shorter exposures.  Unfortunately, those being backordered forever right now means I will play a bit with this setup in this mode and learn how to use the software that can process the data.

Finally, I have to say that I am very happy with the detail that my RASA QHY268C setup provided of this region.  There are some cool details within the cleared out cavity in the elephant head.  And some faint stars that I have not seen typically displayed.  Now if a new 10 or 12 inch scope can achieve the same with this small camera, I won't need to buy me a Spitzer!