Figure 1: IC1396 Nebula in Cepheus.
This is an image of a large nebula, IC1396, in the northern constellation of Cepheus with the famous “Elephant’s Trunk” within it. The nebula image was captured August 19/20, 2023 at Lac Teeples. The nebula is 2400 light years away from Earth. The Elephant’s Trunk (lower centre of image) is so called because it appears something like an elephant’s trunk (or so they say). I don’t see any part of an elephant’s anatomy in this nebula, but your mileage may vary.
Figure 2: IC1396A Elephant's Trunk Nebula (crop of Figure 1)
The overall nebula is a region of ionized gas and the dark patches (including inside the Elephant’s Trunk) are dense regions of gas and dust. The star above the trunk, just above image centre, is the cause of all this emission. This nebula is fairly dim, but does appear in my recent wide-field Milky Way images.
There are also newly formed stars in the Elephant’s Trunk which are pushing the gases around them away. This combined with the bright radiation coming from the other bright star, creates a sharp rim of light where the two forces meet.
This image is incomplete in some sense. It is a combination of two narrow-band channels, red Hydrogen-alpha and blue-green Oxygen-III (doubly ionized Oxygen). It doesn’t include an RGB colour channel, so the colours are false. The red regions are where the H-Alpha is brighter and the white regions are where the blue-green is bright enough to reduce the red colouration. Given that the main emission of this nebula is in H-Alpha the final result is not too far off true colour.
Image of IC396 captured at Lac Teeples on August 19 & 20. Telescope is the RASA11, Camera is the ASI6200MM using H-Alpha (90min) and O-iii (60min) filters. Skies alternated between cloudy and clear, so tracking all night gave only 2.5 hours of good data.
Blog post of Northern Milky Way, including IC396: Recent Observations: The Northern Milky Way centred on Deneb (cklatt1.wixsite.com)
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