IC 1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula
The Elephant Trunk
Nebula is an emission nebula in the constellation Cepheus. This nebula is a cloud of gas and dust located 2400 light years from Earth! In fact, the Elephant Trunk area is bottom-center and
designated VdB 142 (Below). The Herschel's Garnet Star is relatively bright at mag 4.23 on
the top right of the frame. The Elephant Trunk is part of a larger region of
ionized gas illuminated by a nearby massive O-type star. Radiation and winds
from this hot star compress and ionize the edges of cloud, resulting in the
bright "ionization fronts" seen in this image. Young starts have been
found both within and just outside the Elephant Trunk. Very young protostars,
still accreting material from the surrounding nebula, are located inside the
cloud, while fully formed stars have been found just in front of the ionization
edges. It was found that 5% of the mass of gas and dust in
the cloud has been turned into protostars, and the process is
continuing today. This rough cut image consists of 2 hours total exposure
through narrowband pass filter, hydrogen-alpha.
Takahashi FSQ85-EDX
with reducer 0.73x (f/3.86); SBIG ST-8300M with FW5-8300 (-10 C); Baader Hydrogen
Alpha 7 nm filter (23 * 5 min, binning 1x1); Takahashi EM-200 Temma 2M; Guiding
with 50 mm Orion StarShoot AutoGuider; QHY PoleMaster; PHD2, TheSky MaxIm DL,
and Photoshop CS, Mill Creek MetroParks, OH, September 6, 2019
