Elephant and caravan, get thee to a nunnery! (IC1396) (Ian Dixon)

Elephant and caravan, get thee to a nunnery! (IC1396)

Revision title: version 4

Well, if not to a nunnery, then thou photons shall be thus captured by myself.

Hello friends,

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a perfect abstract galactic rendition of our pachydermal friends. This wonderful emission region and young star cluster is often photographed, just never by myself. So, in a mood of reflective contemplation, I thought that I should probably join in the fun and try to gather this data. IC1396 complex is found in the constellation of Cepheus and the elephant itself is rather unique as, to me, it possesses raised eye stalks.

The elephant's trunk is also known as vdB 142 and is just over 20 light-years in length. I was able to capture almost the full nebula using my f6 reduced baby-sized Stellarvue 70t. This view, as is seen even more clearly in the mouse-over, features the bright swept-back ridges and pockets of interesting dust and gas that abound in the region. The numerous pockets of dark dust contains the ingredients for star formation and is dense enough that protostars can be hidden within. This nebula is reasonably faint, but absolutely huge in the sky, requiring me to scrap my 3/4 meter scopes in an attempt to catch most of it (5 degrees). The dark shapes below and to the right of the outstretched Elephant's Trunk, are less famous, and known as The Caravan.

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This session was carved in half by a persistent band of cloud that popped out of nowhere, 1 hour into the imaging run. I suspended the rig, and watched Asimov's Foundation (or a facsimile of that great story) until things cleared up.

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Thanks for looking!

Ian

Original
C
D
Final
E
F

C

Title: Starless version

Description: I extracted the stars in this image to help highlight the structure within IC1396's body of nebulosity.

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: Baby Stellarvue rig for wide angle imaging

Description: Light and super portable. Kind of nice for travelling to very dark sites.

Uploaded: ...

E

Title: version 4

Uploaded: ...

F

Title: Starless version of recent revision

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
PixInsight job	G808PINE8DIR78B969B1IMF3C4FIAKZ1
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	21h38m50s.45
RA (top/left)	21h53m58s.54
RA (top/right)	21h40m19s.66
RA (bottom/right)	21h22m48s.72
RA (bottom/left)	21h37m31s.10

Dec (center)	+57°27′59″.9
Dec (top/left)	+56°22′09″.8
Dec (top/right)	+59°47′46″.6
Dec (bottom/right)	+58°26′35″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	+55°08′06″.4

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