Night Safari

A very large emission nebula, the so-called Elephant’s Trunk Nebula in the Cepheus constellation is rightly one of astrophotography’s most iconic images. Unfortunately my house obscures northern views of the sky from the main observatory and I’ve therefore only imaged this once before in 2018 with some success but definite room for improvement. However, using a Takahashi FSQ 106 located at the DSW observatory in New Mexico, USA during Q3 there were no such constraints, which has resulted in a 29.5 hour data set that forms the foundation of this exciting HaSHO image.

SH2-131 consists of glowing gases illuminated by an open star cluster, which is divided by lanes of dark interstellar dust clouds. The ‘trunk’ itself, designated IC 1396A, dominates the centre of this image and is spectacularly illuminated from behind by a bright star forming region; a longer focal length combined with the QSI camera and 30% crop has produced much closer view than previoulsy in 2018. Together with the Cave Nebula, Fyling Bat and Giant Squid Nebula, the dark nebula LDN-1250 and now the Elephant Trunk Nebula, Cepheus, has proved a very productive area for me this year.

	IMAGING DETAILS
Object	Elephant’s Trunk Nebula SH2-131 (IC 1396)
Constellation	Cepheus
Distance	2,400 light-years
Size	45’ Trunk only
Apparent Magnitude	+3.5 to 5.7

Scope	Takahashi FSQ 106 FL 530mm f/5 = Moonlight Crawler focuser
Mount	Paramount MyT
Guiding	Yes
Camera	QSI 683-WSGB KAF-8300 full frame CCD sensor 5.4nm pixels
	FOV 1.94o x 1.46o Resolution 2.1”/pix Image array 3326 x 2507 pix
Processing	Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight 1.8.8-8, Photoshop CS3 Topaz AI Denoise
Image Location on	Centre RA 21:34:59.08 DEC +57:28:05.86
Exposures	22 Ha, 18 SII & 15 OIII x 1,800 sec Total Time: 27hr 30 min
Calibration	4 x 1,800 sec Darks 34 Ha SII OIII Flats 32 Flat Darks
Location & Darkness	Deep Sky West – amateur hosting facility near Rowe, New Mexico, USA SQM typically >= 21.7
Date & Time	5^th August to 27^th September 2021