Elephant's trunk nebula and the surroundings - LRGB - HOO

[alexbb]

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.

[Spongey]

Fantastic image and a significant improvement over the first!

Edited December 2, 2020 by Spongey

[kirkster501]

A superb image with fabulous detail.

[ollypenrice]

I really do like this image, particularly in the way that it shows the increasing presence of OIII towards the centre of the nebula. You've done a great job here.

Olly

[Adam1234]

Incredible image, well done 

[Allinthehead]

Nicely done Alex, great star colour and I think the dark stuff really stands out.

[MartinB]

A really beautiful image which captures the dusty regions of the nebula perfectly.  Fantastic job

[alexbb]

Thank you all so much!

I will process one day a simple HOO combination too. For this one I tried to keep all the stars in the image. They can distract the eye from the nebula even though they're a little reduced.