IC 1396 The Elephants Trunk Nebula

Location

Taken From DGRO in Edgerton Wisconsin

Telescope & Mount

TMB 130 @f6 on Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 with Astrodon Filters

Image Data

HA  300m - 30m subs, 1x1 at -30

O3  240m- 30m subs, 1x1 at -30

S2  240m - 30m subs, 1x1 at -30

Total of 13 hours exposure

Processing

Calibrated, aligned,stacked in Maxim along with RC Astro consol.  Color combine using Fits Liberator/Photoshop CS4 and the clipped layer mask method described by a nice video from  Ken Crawford.

About this Object

Discription from APOD

Explanation: Is there a monster in IC 1396? Known to some as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, parts of the glowing gas and dust clouds of this star formation region may appear to take on foreboding forms, some nearly human. The entire nebula might even look like a face of a monster. The only real monster here, however, is a bright young star too far from Earth to be dangerous. Energetic light from this star is eating away the dust of the dark cometary globule at the top right of the image. Jets and winds of particles emitted from this star are also pushing away ambient gas and dust. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the IC 1396 complex is relatively faint and covers a region on the sky with an apparent width of more than 10 full moons. Recently, over 100 young stars have been discovered forming in the nebula.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110425.html