The Towering Trunk IC1396 "crop"
The Elephant's Trunk nebula is a region of ionized gasses located in the constellation Cepheus at a distance of 2,400 light-years from Earth. Of interest in this area is the population of very young newborn stars, whose intense stellar winds are excavating the interior of the nebula. Dark wisps of dust hide the cocoon of forming stars, called "globules", which will be blown away when the star ignites.
Captured recently in Narrowband and Broadband using a QHY600 60 Megapixel Full Frame Monochrome CMOS camera mounted on a Takahashi 130 FSQ, courtesy of QHYCCD.
This setup is available immediately for people wanting to subscribe to Grand Mesa Observatory's system 1.
grandmesaobservatory.com/equipment-rentals.
In this cropped version of the original Hubble Palette version (SHO) the H-Alpha is mapped to green channel, SII is mapped to red channel and OIII is mapped to the blue channel. The raw data was preprocessed using Pixinsight, the stars were removed using a tool called "Starnet" and the stars were later replaced during Post Processing in Photoshop CC with the more naturally colored stars from the RGB data.
I was so delighted with the result of the starless image I decided to post a starless image as well as the image with the RGB stars.
Captured bin 2x2 over 5 nights between March and July 2021 for a total acquisition time of 13.1 hours.
Technical Details
Captured and processed by: Terry Hancock
Location: GrandMesaObservatory.com Purdy Mesa, Colorado
Dates of Capture April 18th, July 1st, 4th, 7th and 8th 2021
HA 140 min, 28 x 300 sec
OIII 145 min, 29 x 300 sec
SII 135 min, 27 x 300 sec
LUM 94 min, 47 x 120 sec
RED 96 min, 48 x 120 sec
GREEN 92 min, 46 x 120 sec
BLUE 84 min, 42 x 120 sec
Narrowband Filters by Chroma
Camera: QHY600 Monochrome CMOS Photographic version
Gain 26, Offset 76 in Read Mode Photographic 16 bit, bin 2x2
Calibrated with Dark, Dark/Flat Frames
Optics: Walter Holloway's Takahashi FSQ 130 APO Refractor @ F5
Mount: Paramount ME
Image Scale:2.39 arcsec/pix
Image Acquisition software Maxim DL6, Pre Processing and Starnet in Pixinsight Post Processed in Photoshop CC
The Towering Trunk IC1396 "crop"
The Elephant's Trunk nebula is a region of ionized gasses located in the constellation Cepheus at a distance of 2,400 light-years from Earth. Of interest in this area is the population of very young newborn stars, whose intense stellar winds are excavating the interior of the nebula. Dark wisps of dust hide the cocoon of forming stars, called "globules", which will be blown away when the star ignites.
Captured recently in Narrowband and Broadband using a QHY600 60 Megapixel Full Frame Monochrome CMOS camera mounted on a Takahashi 130 FSQ, courtesy of QHYCCD.
This setup is available immediately for people wanting to subscribe to Grand Mesa Observatory's system 1.
grandmesaobservatory.com/equipment-rentals.
In this cropped version of the original Hubble Palette version (SHO) the H-Alpha is mapped to green channel, SII is mapped to red channel and OIII is mapped to the blue channel. The raw data was preprocessed using Pixinsight, the stars were removed using a tool called "Starnet" and the stars were later replaced during Post Processing in Photoshop CC with the more naturally colored stars from the RGB data.
I was so delighted with the result of the starless image I decided to post a starless image as well as the image with the RGB stars.
Captured bin 2x2 over 5 nights between March and July 2021 for a total acquisition time of 13.1 hours.
Technical Details
Captured and processed by: Terry Hancock
Location: GrandMesaObservatory.com Purdy Mesa, Colorado
Dates of Capture April 18th, July 1st, 4th, 7th and 8th 2021
HA 140 min, 28 x 300 sec
OIII 145 min, 29 x 300 sec
SII 135 min, 27 x 300 sec
LUM 94 min, 47 x 120 sec
RED 96 min, 48 x 120 sec
GREEN 92 min, 46 x 120 sec
BLUE 84 min, 42 x 120 sec
Narrowband Filters by Chroma
Camera: QHY600 Monochrome CMOS Photographic version
Gain 26, Offset 76 in Read Mode Photographic 16 bit, bin 2x2
Calibrated with Dark, Dark/Flat Frames
Optics: Walter Holloway's Takahashi FSQ 130 APO Refractor @ F5
Mount: Paramount ME
Image Scale:2.39 arcsec/pix
Image Acquisition software Maxim DL6, Pre Processing and Starnet in Pixinsight Post Processed in Photoshop CC