Object: IC 1396A is a dark, dense globule commonly referred to as the Elephant’s Trunk nebula. It appears at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim, which is the surface of the dense cloud illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) just to the east of IC 1396A.
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. It is located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light-years from Earth. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity.
This image uses the Hubble palette with narrowband filters for hydrogen alpha, oxygen III, and sulfur II.
Taken: October 16,17 and 18, 2021
Telescope: Astro-Tech 14” RC with Starizona Apex-ED L 0.65x focal reducer
Mount: Paramount ME II
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro (cooled to 0C; Gain 100) Bin 1×1.
Guiding: ZWO ASI290MM-Mini with ZWO M68 Off-Axis Guider (OAG)
Focuser: Moonlite Nitecrawler
Rotator: Moonlite Nitecrawler
Filters used: Chroma Ha, OIII and SII 3nm filters with a ZWO 7-position Electronic Filter Wheel (EFW)
Exposures: 19×300 seconds Ha; 25×300 seconds OIII; and 26×300 seconds SII for a total exposure time of 5.83 hours; calibrated with 40 dark frames, 40 flat frames with 40 dark-flats.
Seeing Conditions:
Image capture and telescope control: Sequence Generator Pro and TheSkyX Pro with a SkyShed POD MAX observatory.
Processed with PixInsight, Photoshop CC 2021