IC 1396 Bi-Colour March. 2020.

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396. It is found in the constellation of Cepheus and lies 2,400 light years distant. The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant's Trunk nebula. The first attempt imaging with my new William Optic GT71. I have had the telescope for 11 weeks but not been able to use it as I am still waiting on the corrector/reducer to arrive. I decided to try it out without the corrector and got what I expected. the stars in the central region were fine but moving outwards they became horribly shaped. I cropped the image, removed the stars and added the stars from a previous image. Imaged on the 18th and 22nd of March 2020.

HEQ5 PRO

WO GT71

QHY163M Gain325 Offset100 -20C

Baader 7nm Ha and 8.5nm OIII narrowband filters.

62 x 120sec Ha

65 x 120sec OIII subs

Acquisition time 4hrs14mins

Processed using Starnet++, RegiStar, Pixinsight and Photoshop.

Done