IC1396, or the Elephant Trunk Nebula, can be found in the constellation Cepheus. This is an image I took over multiple nights in June and July. It is called the Elephant Trunk Nebula due to the distinctive region, shown in the image below.
IC1396 lies 2400 light years away and is approximately 100 light years across. The elephant trunk region is spread out over a 20 light year region. That is one big elephant! It is a star forming region, with several stars less than 100,000 years old. That is young in star years.
The star near the top is Mu Cephei, a red supergiant. It is one of the largest known stars, with a radius over 1500 times larger than our sun. It is 2800 light years away, and is one of the largest and most distant stars visible without binoculars.
The final image is made up of 334 images totaling 27.8 hours. I used a monochrome camera and a Canon 70-200 f/2.8 lens at 200mm. Narrowband filters were used and final post processing was done in PixInsight. IC1396, the Elephant Trunk Nebula, in narrowband.
- SII: 95 images, 7.9 hours
- Ha: 119 images, 9.9 hours
- OIII: 120 images, 10 hours
