IC1396A Elephant's Trunk Nebula in Cepheus

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth.

 

The central part of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant's Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star which lies near its centre.

 

This image is from integrating nearly two hours worth of two minute exposures using my ZenithStar 81 telescope. If there had not been so many clouds I would have been able to collect four or five hours of data which would have made the image even sharper and more detailed.

 

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Telescope: William Optics ZenithStar 81 APO

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

 

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus 256G

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: Optolong L-eNhance filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

 

Stacked from:

Lights 53 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flats 30 at 9seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flats 30 at 9 seconds gain 101 temp -10C

 

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Added captions in Photoshop CS4

 

 

 

Done