Elephant Trunk NGC1396 (At last!!)

[Sparrow]

I've tried this object for the last three years without success - mainly due to the fact that the camera hadn't been modded. Now it is modded I've finally managed to pick something up.

2 1/2 hours of data made up of 5 minute subs at ISO800 through the 8" Newt with the Canon 1000D

Hope you like it.

p.s. Having posted it on here I've noticed a gradient left to right which wasn't apparent before - now dealt with but haven't put the revised version on here.

[Black Knight]

Great pic Sparrow

Sent from my mobile using Tapatalk, so please excuse the speeling and granma!

[Mark72]

Well done!

Mark

[Gina]

Great start Did you take darks and flats? Because they help a lot. Otherwise take some more data and you should be well away. I found the difference between just over two hours and nearly four quite was amazing.

[Quatermass]

Great shot and well worth all the effort to capture it.

[andyo]

very nice capture certainly worth the effort

[Sparrow]

Thanks for all the comments everyone.

Gina - yes I always use darks and flats - lots of them, and it does a woderful job of removing noise and vignetting. I'm afraid the gradient is a perennial problem caused by local light pollution from neighbouring gardens, which flats do nothing to solve. My LP filter does a good job of removing the Sodium LP but can do little against full spectrum outdoor lighting and it always gives me gradients to deal with. Normally I can remove it quite successfully using the DBA feature of Pixinsight, but with so much of this image being nebula, using the DBA tool would destroy the signal. I've had to manually remove some of the gradient using the gradient tool in Photoshop. Funnily enough, I thought I'd just about nailed it until I posted it on here and it seemed to show up again - very odd. As I said, I've now corrected it but not posted the amended version.

[Gina]

Thanks for the explanation Broadband LP is deadly Only NB imaging blocks it and even then not necessarily fully eg. a full moon within 30 degrees.

[Sparrow]

Thanks for the explanation Broadband LP is deadly Only NB imaging blocks it and even then not necessarily fully eg. a full moon within 30 degrees.

I agree Gina. I'd love to go narrowband as it would solve many of my problems but sadly budget just won't allow at the moment - maybe one day. I'm just hoping that as energy prices increase more and more, my delightful neighbours might think about turning off their outside lights to save money. Even better, the council might one day turn off half the street lights - that would be brilliant. I've seen LP get worse in my area in the last 4 years mainly thanks to neighbours who've had major work done on their houses, and then have outside lights fitted - not security lights, but the ones that stay on all night.

[Gina]

I think outside lights left on all night are a disgraceful waste of energy when it's so precious as well as attrocious light pollution