IC 1396 - The Astro Sky

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Date
2020-08-03 and 31

Observation place
My permanent observatory in Longueuil
in white light pollution zone

Technical

Telescope	Orion 80ED refractor - Diameter 80mm, focal length 480mm, f / 6
Mount	Celestron CGEM
Imaging camera	Atik 383 L + monochrome regulated at -20^o Celsius
Autoguiding camera	ZWO ASI 120MM with one optical splitter
Auto Guidance Accuracy (RMS)	August 3: 0,88 '' arc RMS (1,76 '' arc total) August 31: 1,45 '' arc RMS (2,9 '' arc total)
Image type	Ha (HaR-VsB) (Vs for synghetic green) Red layer with Ha and red filters
Exhibition	Ha (10 x 10 'bin 2 × 2), Red (10 x 3' bin 2 × 2), Blue (9 x 3 'Bin 2 × 2)
Image acquisition software	Maxim DL
Guidance software	PHD Guiding 2
Pretreatment	Maxim DL
Treatment	Photoshop and PixInsight
Specific treatment	Create a synthetic green image

Object description

Object type	"The Elephant's Trunk Nebula" emission nebula
Constellation	Cepheus
Visual magnitude	6
Surface gloss	17
Distance	3000 light years
Dimension seen from Earth	170 x 140 arc minutes

IC 1396 contains the Elephant's Trunk Nebula (bearing the number VDB 142 from the Van Den Berg catalog) seen in the image in the center. IC1396 is a large emission nebula approximately 5 times the diameter of the full moon as seen from Earth. It is located about 3000 light years from Earth. The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is now believed to be a site of star formation, containing several very young stars (less than 100000 years old) that were discovered in infrared images in 2003.

IC1396 is very difficult to see visually with a telescope, even with a large diameter instrument located in a site without light pollution, since the surface brightness of the nebula is only 17.

In my image, we only see a portion of nebula IC1396 (approximately 127 x 96 arc minutes compared to the nebula which is 170 x 140 arc minutes as seen from Earth). For this reason, I focused on framing the Elephant's Trunk Nebula which is about 50 minutes of arc at height. To bring out the very faint nebulosities that surround the Elephant's Trunk nebula, I devoted an exposure time in H-Alpha luminance of 1,83 hours with times of 10 minutes per photo in a 2 × 2 bin. . The total equivalent exposure time in 1 × 1 bin is 7,32 hours (40 minutes per photo)! In addition, it is very surprising, in my site of extreme pollution (white area), that I managed to image so many weak nebulosities that surround the nebula!

Richard Beauregard
Sky Astro - CCD
My impression "We cannot be alone in this gigantic universe"