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My first image of the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula

Less than 1 minute Minutes
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC 1396) from my “remote” observatory at home, under less than ideal weather conditions. The air was hazy and humidity was very high, but I was able to capture approximately 1 hour of light frames, before the fog rolled in.
 
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula was a first for me and I was surprised to see so many details with such a short total integration time.
 
From Wikipedia: The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. It is commonly called the Elephant’s Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) that is just to the east of IC 1396A.
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity.
 
Setup

Date: 2022-10-29
Scope: Rokinon 135mm lens
Mount: Celestron CG-5 mount
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI533 MC PRO (cooled at -10°C)
Filters: Optolong L-Extreme 2″
Guiding camera: ZWO ASI224MC, IR Cut filter, PHD2
Guide Scope: Orion Deluxe Mini 50mm Guide Scope
Software: NINA, PixInsight, NoiseXTerminator, Pixel Math (for star reduction), Starnet (for the starless version of the nebula), GIMP
Total Integration Time: 60 minutes (20×180 seconds)
Calibration frames: 20 dark, 20 flat, 100 bias
Size: 5.01 x 5.01 degrees
Radius: 3.545 degrees
Pixel scale: 12 arcsec/pixel

Note: Scroll the slider to switch between the images of the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC 1396) and its starless version. You can also open the image of the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula in its original resolution.

Scroll the slider to switch between the images of the Elephant's Trunk Nebula and its starless versionScroll the slider to switch between the images of the Elephant's Trunk Nebula and its starless version

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula as shown on my N.I.N.A. screen. Guiding for the night was 0.93 RMS.

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula preview on my N.I.N.A. screen

If you want to learn how I connect my equipment to NINA, select a target, slew the telescope to the target, and set up a simple imaging sequence, I published this video on YouTube.

To learn more about how I automated my telescope with N.I.N.A., you can watch this video I posted on YouTube.

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