ScienceDownEast | ScienceDownEast Astrophotography | Recent Images | IC 1396 Elephant Trunk Nebula (82 x 20 min)
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IC 13965 (also known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula) is according to Wikipedia, 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. It is 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 bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) that is just to the east of IC 1396. The entire IC 1396 region is ionized by the massive star, except for dense globules that can protect themselves from the star's harsh ultraviolet rays. 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.
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| Exposure | 82@1200 sec (27 hours) | |||||||||
| ISO | 3200 | |||||||||
| Camera | Nikon Z7 [8856 x 5504] | |||||||||
| Optics | Skywatcher Esprit 120mm Refractor, 840 mm focal length | |||||||||
| Filter | Radian Triad Ultra Quad-Band Narrowband Filter | |||||||||
| Guiding | Phd2 using a ZWO 224MC on an Orion 60x240mm Guide scope | |||||||||
| Controller | Images taken using Kstars on an Mele Quieter 3C under Unbuntu 22.04.3 | |||||||||
| Location | Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia. | |||||||||
| Date | 2022-10-18 and earlier sessions | |||||||||
| PixInsight Processing |
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