The large emission nebula in Cepheus catalogued as IC1396 (though that number also applies to the star cluster contained within the nebula) and which
The large emission nebula in Cepheus catalogued as IC1396 (though that number also applies to the star cluster contained within the nebula) and which also contains the dark feature at right popularly known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula, or formally vdB 142. The dark nebula at bottom is B160'; the dark nebula above centre is B161. The red giant star Mu Cephei is at top. The view is rendered in monochrome as it was shot on a moonlit night through a deep red filter in the light of H-alpha emission, prominent in such nebulas. This is a stack of 10 x 16-minute exposures with the SharpStar 94mm apo refractor at (with its reducer/flattener), and with the Canon Ra at ISO 1600 and equipped with an Astronomik clip-in 12nm Hydrogen-Alpha filter which lets through only very deep red light. Half the exposures were taken with a waning Moon lighting the sky. Guided with the MGEN autoguider applying a dithering shift between each exposure to eliminate thermal noise when stacking the images. (Each sub-frame had a lot of thermal speckling, as when shooting in H-a with a colour camera only 1/4 of the pixels, the red ones, are recording any signal.) No darks or LENR employed. All stacking and alignment was with Photoshop. Faint nebulosity was brought out with luminosity-masked curves created with Lumenzia. ON1 NoNoise AI applied to the base stack. A Dynamic Contrast filter from ON1 2022 applied to a stamped upper layer helped snap up the dark nebulosity, as well as using a Paint Contrast layer (like dodging and burning) from TK8 Actions. A mild application of Russell Croman's StarXTerminator plug-in backed off the stars within the nebulosity to further enhance the nebula structures. StarXTerminator was applied selectively via the use of non-destructive layers, blend modes and masks. A mild colour grade was applied as a finishing touch to add the blue tint to the darks.
Size: 5400px × 3584px
Photo credit: © Alan Dyer / VWPics / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: -, -alpha., 02, 12nm, 142, 94mm, ai, astronomik, astrophotography, b160, b161, basic, canon, cepheus, clip-, colors, colour, contrast, croman, dithering, dynamic, edph, elephant, emission, filter, grade, grey, hydrogen, ic1396, lumenzia, mgen, monochrome, nebula, nonoise, on1, paint, photography, photoshop, plug-, ra, science, sharpstar, sky, starshrink, starxterminator, thermal, tk8, trunk, universe, vdb
