Same data from 2 weeks, post processed with new techniques in Pixinsight:
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.
[1] The piece 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 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. 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.
35 x 180sec light subs
35 auto flats
30 darks
Stacked, integrated and post processed in Pixinsight and touched up in Paintshop Pro for clarity and vibrancy.
Equipment used: SW ED100
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