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Contains:  IC 1396
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IC 1396A - The Elephant Trunk Nebula, 


            Cory Schmitz
IC 1396A - The Elephant Trunk Nebula

IC 1396A - The Elephant Trunk Nebula

Technical card

Imaging telescope or lens:Vixen ED80SF

Imaging camera:Canon 550D


Guiding telescope or lens:Vixen Finderscope 9x50

Guiding camera:Orion StarShoot AutoGuider

Focal reducer:Orion Field Flattener for Short Refractors

Software:O'Telescope BackyardEOSPixInsightPHD Guiding

Resolution: 2000x1489

Dates:June 7, 2013

Integration: 0.0 hours

Avg. Moon age: 28.49 days

Avg. Moon phase: 1.22% job: 129037

RA center: 323.965 degrees

DEC center: 57.487 degrees

Pixel scale: 2.006 arcsec/pixel

Orientation: 179.430 degrees

Field radius: 0.695 degrees


IC 1396 is a Hydrogen alpha rich region in the constellation Cepheus. It contains the more widely-known nebula IC 1396A, the Elephant's Trunk (right center), which is a concentration of gas and dust that is recently thought to be an area of star formation. The two stars in the dark patch in the middle are older, however. The nebula's shape is caused by ionization and compression from stellar wind of the young stars it contains, pushing outward. [Source:'s_Trunk_nebula]

While the region is not that difficult to process in PixInsight (expect for noise and sheer volume of stars), it did require a good amount of capture time and could have used more as it is somewhat dim and requires an IR-sensing camera such as a modded DSLR or CCD.

Total integration time: 112 minutes
28x4m sub exposures
ISO800 f/7.5

25 Dark
25 Flat
25 Flat-dark
30 Bias

Vixen ED80sf 80mm APO refractor
Celestron CG-5 ASGT mount
Orion SSAG autoguider + 50mm guide scope
Canon T2i 550D DSLR (Baader IR modded)
Orion Field Flattener

Image acquisition with BackyardEOS
Guiding with PHD
Calibration/alignment/integration and post-processing with PixInsight



Cory Schmitz
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons

Sky plot

Sky plot


IC 1396A - The Elephant Trunk Nebula, 


            Cory Schmitz

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