Where's the Elephants Trunk?

[rubecula]

I used the mount's GoTo to find the Elehant's trunk, took a couple of images and couldn't see anything in a stretched image. Found slightly different RA and DEC on line but that location didn't reveal anything either.  Checked one of the images in Astronomy.net and could see I was in approximately the right area.  Then it clouded over.

Are the published figures actually on the trunk or at the centre of the nebula?  Are the RA and DEC for the trunk available anywhere?

Thanks,

[Pete Presland]

I found some coordinates on here http://www.astropixel.it/ic-1396-elephants-trunk-nebula/  RA 06h 31m 42.881s - DEC +04 57' 12.248"

[rubecula]

Pete, those co-ords look distinctly odd, they seem a long way away from the ones I used.  Maybe I don't understand the co-ordinate system as well as I thought.  I've just found these RA: 21h 35m 37s Dec: 57degrees 24' 03" at   http://www.starrywonders.com/elephanttrunk.html   which are close to but different from the ones I used last night from Wikipedia. I'll keep looking for some reference that gives the co-ords of the trunk.

[ronin]

What is the goto and when di you get it?

The values alter very slightly year by year, I know it is small but it is not zero. My goto is 16 years old now so I half expect some objects to be on the other side of the sky. Another question is how did you goto the ET Nebula? Best is to go to a nearby star, centre that and sync on it then make the short hop.

 

SS5 say Cepheus, mag 5.6 and RA: 21  39  37.91, Dec: 57  34  38.7. The image guven looks just like Rosette Nebula

[A budding astronomer]

Hello Rubecula, The Elephants Trunk nebula is a downright beautiful nebula to photograph and a fascinating star cluster to observe. On my Goto telescope the the option to slew to the Elephant Trunk nebula doesn't exist, so I have to find it manually whenever I want to observe it.

The Elephant Trunk nebula is located in between Mu Cephei ( The Garnet star ) and Deneb ( Alpha Cygni ) Mu Cephei is a 4th magnitude star and is constantly changing due to it's variability, While Deneb is very bright star that is very easy to locate. I found a way to find the nebula and it's quite easy once you get the hang of it after a while.

Step 1: Slew your Goto scope to Alderamin ( Alpha Cephei ).

Step 2: Move the telescope via the hand control down to the Mu Cephei ( I will include a map of Cepheus in the media box.)

Step 3: Once you've centered Mu Cephei, move the telescope right at a slow speed, after a few seconds you will find a crazy amount of stars in your eyepiece. This is the Elephant Trunk nebula.

I hope this helped bud   

[Davey-T]

Hi Robin, what FOV have you got ? probably not a lot with the Edge HD.

Those co-ord's are about right so It's there or thereabouts, lots of nebulosity and stars in that area so you should see something and try slewing around taking long, high ISO exposures to find it.

Dave

[rubecula]

2 hours ago, ronin said:

What is the goto and when di you get it?

The values alter very slightly year by year, I know it is small but it is not zero. My goto is 16 years old now so I half expect some objects to be on the other side of the sky. Another question is how did you goto the ET Nebula? Best is to go to a nearby star, centre that and sync on it then make the short hop.

 

SS5 say Cepheus, mag 5.6 and RA: 21  39  37.91, Dec: 57  34  38.7. The image guven looks just like Rosette Nebula

The Goto is a Nexstar+ handset and I used the IC 1396 co-ordinates. I've just noticed that Stellarium gives J2000 and On Date co-ordinates. The RA values are very similar but the DEC values are different by 4.5min  From memory those in the handset were nearer to the J2000 figures. So maybe that was the issue.

Thanks for that Budding Astronomer.  To my shame I always use the mounts GoTo which is normally quite good (once its accurately aligned). 

Dave, you're right, the FoV is only 54' x 36'.  I was taking 300 sec ISO 800 images.  I'll have to try slewing around a bit more.

It's a damn shame it clouded over as the mount was tracking beautifully for a change, typical!!

[Davey-T]

Once you find it you can probably enter the co-ord's in the handset as a user object.

Dave

[geordie85]

To be fair the trunk is actually quite faint, I used to have trouble seeing it I'm a single stretched sub. if you look at other images you'll notice a sort of zig zaggy line of stars. I use this to align and frame.

[A budding astronomer]

Your welcome bud, I always help when I can.

[rubecula]

Hopefully I've made some progress.  When searching for the location of the Trunk I came across this website: http://annesastronomynews.com/annes-picture-of-the-day-the-elephants-trunk-nebula/ 

I noticed that at the bottom of the image it says IC 1396a. From there I went to the SIMBAD database via the Hipparchus catalogue. A coordinate query and an AladinLite view showed the individual stars in the trunk.  Selecting star HD 205794 gave me the J2000 coordinates and finally Robert Ayers coordinate conversion site (http://www.robertmartinayers.org/tools/coordinates.html)

produced the present day coordinates as RA = 21 36 13.3 and Dec = 57 28 21

Fingers crossed, this will put the scope slap bang on the trunk when I can next get out.  The forecast shows clear for tomorrow.....but shush, don't tell the forecasters or they'll change it to rain, snow, fog or some such.

[almcl]

Sounds like you have it nailed now, but just in case not, there's a plate solve of mine for the trunk on

http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1352804#original 

it gives the coordinates of the image centre as  21^h 35^m 28.438^s     +57° 32' 02.371" 

that's not quite the trunk but it was my choice for the framing (not one of my better images, I admit)

[rubecula]

Almcl, You might not feel that was one of your better image, but I would be very happy with it. Thanks for doing the plate solve for me.

[Peje]

On 06/11/2016 at 19:48, almcl said:

Sounds like you have it nailed now, but just in case not, there's a plate solve of mine for the trunk on

http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1352804#original 

it gives the coordinates of the image centre as  21^h 35^m 28.438^s     +57° 32' 02.371" 

that's not quite the trunk but it was my choice for the framing (not one of my better images, I admit)

 

I tried this target at the weekend using a modified Canon, unfortunately I forgot to attach the HA filter until the run was half complete

 

[MARS1960]

On 11/6/2016 at 12:03, rubecula said:

I used the mount's GoTo to find the Elehant's trunk, took a couple of images and couldn't see anything in a stretched image. Found slightly different RA and DEC on line but that location didn't reveal anything either.  Checked one of the images in Astronomy.net and could see I was in approximately the right area.  Then it clouded over.

Are the published figures actually on the trunk or at the centre of the nebula?  Are the RA and DEC for the trunk available anywhere?

Thanks,

I also have a nexstar+, i always use the precise goto function, the target always ends up pretty much dead centre, i find that 2 alignment stars and two calibration stars and then a precise goto never fails.

[rubecula]

Well I found it - at least the end of the trunk.  A very quick and dirty development below shows that I have a couple of issues:

1) huge bloated stars, that's after using Noel Carboni's action to reduce them. Amlc how did you get such small stars?

2) there's a misty patch across the image, looks like I've got condensation or something in the image train.

And I've also got to learn how to orient the camera and do mosaics.

There's so much to learn in this hobby!!

 

[almcl]

1 hour ago, rubecula said:

Well I found it - at least the end of the trunk.

Well done!  Always satisfying to nail an elusive target.  

 Amlc how did you get such small stars?

Not sure in this case, but StarTools'  'Magic' function, although deprecated by purists (quite rightly) can be very helpful. Just don't tell anyone? 

And I've also got to learn how to orient the camera and do mosaics.

There's so much to learn in this hobby!!

Ain't that the truth!  If you find out about mosaics do let us know?  My efforts so far haven't really worked