Location/ Date:

Zepernick/ Eggersdorf,  GER / 26. August 2015

Telescope/ Lens:

Zeiss 110/750, 10" ONTC Newton

Mount:

Celestron CGE

Camera:

Atik 460exm, Atik 383L+

Exposure time:

40x 1800" Baader Ha 7nm CCD

10x 1800" Astronomik [OIII] 12 nm CCD

8x 300" Astronomik RGB each

Total exposure:

25 hours

Description:

Is there a monster in IC 1396? Known to some as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, parts of gas and dust clouds of this star formation region may appear to take on foreboding forms, some nearly human. The only real monster here, however, is a bright young star too far from Earth to hurt us. Energetic light from this star is eating away the dust of the dark cometary globule near the top of the above image. Jets and winds of particles emitted from this star are also pushing away ambient gas and dust. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a much larger region on the sky than shown here, with an apparent width of more than 10 full moons. Recently more than 100 young stars have been discovered that are formed inside the nebula. The picture is showing the bright ridges framing pockets of inter stellar dust and gas. tose embedded dark tendrilous clouds contain the raw material for the birth of stars. they are hiding proto stars in their opaque cosmic dust.

Image recording:

Nico Geisler, Frank Iwaszkiewicz

Image processing:

Nico Geisler, Frank Iwaszkiewicz