IC1396 The Elephant's Trunk (Richard Francis)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cepheus (Cep) · Contains: IC 1396 · Sh2-131 · VdB142

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IC1396 The Elephant's Trunk

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IC1396 The Elephant's Trunk

I think I’m getting the hang of this camera. This image is a composite of images taken in Dec 2019 and Jan 2020 under a variety of conditions, with different values of Black Level and with the anti-dew heater on or off. By carefully collecting the different types together and calibrating them with appropriate frames I could, after much effort, assemble a set of uniform calibrated frames (separately for High Gain and Low Gain, of course). After applying PixInsight’s HDR Composite process I could finally assemble a regular set of SII, Ha and OIII masters. A lot of work, but I got there.

It’s worth pointing out that a large number of these frames were made with the Moon at or near Full, and with thin cloud, so the signal-to-noise was not always very good.

The Elephant's Trunk nebula is a column of gas and dust in a much larger region of ionised gas, identified as IC1396. The dark globule at the top of this column gained its name due to its similarity to an elephant's head. A massive star, above the globule, is illuminating the rim and the fierce stellar wind is driving the material away, downwards in this image. The eye of the elephant is a cavity in the globule and this has been emptied by the stellar winds from two young stars, of a few million years, which are in the cavity. Other very young stars, less than 100 000 years old, have also been detected at infra-red wavelengths.

Narrowband imaging
UK Astro-Imaging
Astrophotographes (France)

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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.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3193196
PixInsight job	MEM7O5DPD2QEH0B0SLO94BRUCTQF3JXJ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	21h36m10s.310
RA (top/left)	21h39m59s.999
RA (top/right)	21h40m07s.362
RA (bottom/right)	21h32m14s.321
RA (bottom/left)	21h32m20s.152

Dec (center)	+57°39′38″.80
Dec (top/left)	+57°07′42″.90
Dec (top/right)	+58°11′07″.27
Dec (bottom/right)	+58°11′08″.67
Dec (bottom/left)	+57°07′43″.68

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IC1396 The Elephant's Trunk

IC1396 The Elephant's Trunk

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IC1396 The Elephant's Trunk

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