Elephant's Trunk Nebula and its locality (IC1396): My first attempt to adapt a thirty years old 90mm f2.8 macro lens to an astro camera. 4 nights in Feb-March '26, total exposure 3 hrs 37 min, narrowband Ha-Oiii filter, processed in Siril.
The bright red star on the outer edge of the nebula at 4 o'clock is Mu Cephei, William Herschel's Garnet Star, one of the largest stars in our galaxy.
#ic1396 #nebula #GarnetStar #WilliamHerschel #astronomy #nature #astrophotography #photography #ScienceSunday

IC1396 Elephant Trunk Nebula.
ZWO Seestar S30.
150mm, f5, 1458 exposures of 10’’.
#telescope #telescopes #zwo #zwoasi #zwoseestar #zwoseestars30 #seestar #seestars30 #astro #astrophoto #astrophotos #astrophotography #astrophotographer #spacephotography #astronomy #spaceexploration #nasa #universe #space #deepsky #deepspace #nebula #elephanttrunk #elephanttrunknebula #ic1396

IC1396 Elephant Trunk Nebula.
ZWO Seestar S30.
150mm, f5, 1458 exposures of 10’’.
#telescope #telescopes #zwo #zwoasi #zwoseestar #zwoseestars30 #seestar #seestars30 #astro #astrophoto #astrophotos #astrophotography #astrophotographer #spacephotography #astronomy #spaceexploration #nasa #universe #space #deepsky #deepspace #nebula #elephanttrunk #elephanttrunknebula #ic1396

Good Friday afternoon. Just downloaded the images from last night and didn’t look at them till now. Still working on my project - I image left. Here is a mosaic of #IC1396 #TheElephantTrunkNebula that I took last night. Used the s50 and joined / edited the images with Affinity Photo 2. Did use some extra enhancement using the phone. #seestar #S50 #space #astronomy #amateur

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula (IC 1396)
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Stepping into this frame feels like drifting through a quiet storm of gas, dust, and newborn stars. Center stage is the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, a sinuous, pillar-like structure embedded within the vast emission nebula IC 1396 in the constellation Cepheus. The scene spans light-years of interstellar sculpture carved by radiation and stellar winds from hot, massive stars.

This region captures a star-forming ecosystem in motion. Radiation from massive stars sculpts the surrounding cloud into pillars and globules, compressing some areas while dispersing others. Over millions of years, these processes recycle cosmic material, seeding future generations of stars and planets — raw ingredients for worlds and, potentially, life.

Scope: Askar 103APO
Lens: Askar 0.6x Reducer
Camera: ZWO ASI 294MC Pro
Filter: Antlia Tri-Band RGB Ultra
Mount: SkyWatcher AZ-EQ5-GT
Guiding: Svbony SV165 with ZWO ASI 224MC
Controller: ZWO ASIAir Pro

Integration time: 5hrs 40min

Full version and print available at:
https://adfr.io/astro/20250819_ic1396

#astrophotography #astrophoto #astrophotographer #deepsky #deepskyphotography #deepskyobject #deepskyastrophotography #nebula #deepspace #space #nightsky #astronomy #cosmos #stargazing #stellarevolution #spaceisart #ic1396 #elephantstrunk #elephantstrunknebula #elephantstrunknebulae

Sh1-89 planetary nebula, IC1369 open cluster, dark nebula in constellation Cygnus. There are a lot of tiny planetary nebulae with a variety of interesting forms, but often hard to image. This one is a nice combination of clustered stars, dark nebulae, hydrogen nebulae and this planetary nebula #sh189 #planetarynebula #ic1396 #astrophotography #ioptroncem25p #asiairpro #williamopticsz73 #optolonglultimate 3nm dualband 9h45m 900s subs #narrowbandimaging #astropixelprocessor bortle5 sky

I’m so glad that I spent more time on the Elephant’s Trunk! A lot of faint nebulae were visible in my last image but now that I have over 10 hours on it, it all just pops out. It gives the trunk a lot of contrast, revealing all of the detailed structure it has. I even gave BlurXTerminator a go which fixed the star shapes and sharpened up the nebulae, and made the already-detailed trunk even more incredible.

421x90s lights (10.53 hours), darks, flats, biases stacked and edited in PixInsight.
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🌌 The Elephant's Trunk (IC 1396)
🔭 Meade RB-70 (Scope), SkyWatcher GTi (Mount)
📸 Player One Ares-C Pro (Main)
📅 Bloomington, MN (Bortle 8)
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#highpointscientific #nebula #elephantstrunknebula #ic1396 #photography #astrophotography #astronomy #pixinsight #graxpert #playerone #playeroneastronomy #sonysensor #arescpro