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So, having started one project last year which is yet to be completed I decided to start a new one, and what better target than IC1396 the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, but in widefield so can capture the whole thing. Utilising the excellent Samyang 135mm paired with Baader F2 filters I think this has turned out quite well, a little muted but it's my first attempt at manually processing the colours of SHO and taming the greens down to get the yellow/orange/cyan colour. Another plus I got to see some of the Perseid's at the same time.

Hi! I shot this during six diffrent nights in March and April. I had to throw lots of subs out the window due to high clouds but I managed to pull off 13 hours of good quality data from those nights. Technical details: SkyWatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5, ZWO ASI1600MM-C, SkyWatcher EQ6 guided with ASI224MC, TS Optics LRGB and Baader narrowband filters. Ha 60x300s, OIII 32x300s, SII 53x300s, R/G/B 10x120s. Total integration time is ~13 hours. Larger image can be seen on my blog. www.evenfall.space/post/the-elephant-s-trunk-nebula

This is one of the first targets I shot and was happy with since the beginning of my astrophotography journey Almost 4 years later, I decided to shoot again this nebula, this time with better gear and traveling to darks skies for most of the data. Even though it resembles the old image's colours, this new one is more accurate from the real colours point of view. Most of this nebula is made of ionized gases which emit light at certain wavelengths. Most of the emission of the hydrogen comes out as deep red, whilst oxigen emits a blue-green light mostly. But, besides the emissions in this area, the region here contains also dark nebulae (dust blocking the light behind) and reflection nebulae (easily visible at the trunk's tip). Named by its appearance in visible light as Elephant trunk, it is also described by many as a lady with long hair seen from the back. This whole region spawns over more than 3 degrees on the sky at over 3000 light years away. In comparison, the moon seems only 0.5 degrees wide. Another star in this show (pun intended) is Herschel's Garnet star, or Mu Cephei, the brightest star in the image. It's about 100000 times brighter than our sun and it's also one of the largest known stars. Its radius is larger than the orbit of Jupiter around our Sun. I started capturing data for this image early this year and ended this summer. I shot 2 panels in order to capture the whole area and I exposed more than 40h in total. I've been quite inactive lately unfortunately. You can watch the image at full resolution on astrobin or on Flicker. And the old image here.

2 hours each per channel O3 S2 Ha Zwo filters total 6 hours. Sharpstar 94 x0.8 reducer ASI1600mm. 3rd time of imaging this target since autumn 2019. Thanks for looking.

Hello all, I recently collected some OIII data for my previous attempt of the Elephants Trunk. I used a 2" Astronomik 12nm filter inside my TS Imaging Star 71, riding in my dual imaging rig. I knew it would be very difficult to point the TS71 correctly and frame the Trunk with the OIII filter blocking so much light, so I was lucky to have this method which put it spot on target. I added the OIII data as a "lighten" layer to the original blue channel, then used some "selective colour" etc (alignment was done with Registar). The new image is a bit dark, I know, but that is intentional and I think it works well if watched in low ambient light. C&C most welcome. Used Nikon D7000 & NexGuide on HEQ5 Pro. Ragnar

I shot this over 6 nights. We had an amazing go of clear nights in a row. Now it's all rain until next week. But while it was clear, I managed two nights per filter on my newest scope. A total of ~ 760 3 min images. I think the total imaging time was 37.8 hours. Shot it through my newest scope the RedCat 51mm. It did well, but could have used a belt focuser. I managed to get one together from Moonlite, but only just after imaging this. The scope was able to hold focus a good bit of the night, but the quality curve looked like a swan dive towards the end as the scope lost focus at the end of the night each night. I got out my old trusty AVX to manage the aiming parts of the setup. Guided by an old Orion SSAG I had lying around and a recently acquired ZWO Mini guide scope since it matches the RedCat so well. But I think I'm going to need to swap out the guide cam for something with smaller pixels. Overall though, it worked. Main camera was ZWO ASI 1600 MMC. I used 5nm Astrodon filters.

This has been my project since the start of this season and now I think I´ll just leave it... for now 😉 I started last season (with a longer FL) but didn´t like how my Baader O3 filter matched the Astrodon Ha filter, so now I had to get a 3nm O3 as well. This is a total of: 60*5 minutes of 3nm Ha 114*5 minutes of 3nm O3. Shot with a ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool and a Canon 300/4L IS tele lens. The lens suffers from bad star shapes in the corners but I managed to get it decent anyway. Didn´t want to stop it down from f/4 either. Combined as a semi-RGB (or what to call it) from R=Ha, G=70%O3+30%Ha, B=O3. Processed it as LRGB using a combined Lum from 60% Ha L and 40% O3 L. I am really happy that I finally feel satisfied with a target! Usually I just get restless and move on when half of the data is collected. Hope you like it!

Here is an image I took last month, around 8 hours of data. Taken with an FSQ and ASI 1600M Cool camera

Finally managed to add some proper Ha to the previous version (which was a noisy mess of a thing!), so this is now: 7 x 600s and 14 x 900s (4 hrs 40 mins) of Ha 17 x 900s (4 hrs 15 mins) of OIII SII synthesized using a blend of 60% of Ha and 40% of OIII Nikon D5300a 2" Baader filters Skywatcher 80ED Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro 50 Bias and 30 Flats Guided with PHD2 and a finder-guider (QHY5) Captured with SGP Pre-processed in APP Post-processed in PS The extra Ha data has made a massive difference. So this one was much easier to process. Still not completely happy with the colours, I may tweak them a bit at a later date. But for now I think I'm pretty much done with this target, time to move on to a new one methinks! C&C welcome as always. Clear skies! https://flic.kr/p/GBb38M

Hifolks, Here's my take on IC1396, let me know what you think. In total 7.5 hours exposure time using narrowband Ha, Sii, Oiii. Post processing in photoshop and lightroom. Thanks for watching, clear skies!

Sometimes the weather gods look on you kindly. A nice new Samyang 135mm turned up from that well known jungle supplier, I managed to assemble it to my Atik 428ex mono along with an Ha filter and got the spacing correct, and low and behold the skies stayed clear - all on the same day! I am sure there is room for improvement with the processing but this is IC1396 processed in PI; STF applied with HT, and a little HDRM + LHE to try to tease out some detail. Any help on improving the processing would be gratefully received - I really don't feel I get the best out of processing mono images. By the way this is 12x300s + 10x600s combined with HDR process in PI; flats, no darks and a master bias. Thank you for looking. Adrian

Clouds, clouds and rubbish seeing have been the order of the day here. Finally managed to get something over the past three nights. Seeing was not great and the target hid behind the trees until 00.30 so not too much time to get anything before the dawn started to appear. Taken with WO-ZS71 and 428ex this is 8 x 600s of Ha, OIII and SII - processed in PI and PS with some creative use of colour. I'm pretty sure there is more wrong with this image than there is right about it. As ever advice and comments always welcome. Not expecting to get anything else now until August. Thanks for looking. Adrian

Here is a image based on more Ha data from the last nights but here mainly collected by my Canon 300mm f/4 lens (38 x 10-12 min with an unmodded Canon 60D ISO1600) with Ha data from my 5" refractor (sitting side by side, 18 x 25 min with a Canon 60Da ISO1600) added centrally. The RGB also comes from the Canon lens and a 60Da but collected in October (96 x 3 min ISO1600). C & S most welcome Cheers Göran EDIT: I added the Ha data as a B/W image

Can hardly believe it but we have had several clear nights up here recently. Here is Ha data captured with my ES 5" apo refractor and a Canon 60Da (18 x 25 min over the last two nights). So it is captured with a Ha sensitive DSLR. To the Ha data I have then added RGB data from October 2017 taken with a Canon 300mm f/4 lens (96 x 3 min) and the ES refractor (35 x 10 min), so totally 18 hours of bits and pieces of data. All with Canon 60D or 60Da cameras at ISO 1600. Ha was primarily used as Lum. Comments & Suggestions most welcome! Cheers Göran