Astrophotographers, in their chat rooms, are wont to offer excuses when displaying their images. I do it from time to time. However, factors such as "transparency" and "seeing" can affect one's final result. Being the impatient imager that I am, I could go into other excuses such as poor collimation, bloated stars, etc.
However, last night, with poor transparency, I tried to photograph an interesting nebula...the Elephant... in the star cluster IC 1396 – an ionized gas region located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from us. It is on the western side of the cluster, and if you Google up images of it, you'll get all kinds of them. Mine had to be cropped, and I experimented with different colorations to bring out the image. 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. Below is a 15 minute stacked (30 sec. X 30 images) portrait of the Elephant with its long trunk and visible eye. Click on for a larger view.
During the imaging, I stepped outside the observatory for a few minutes and, through the haze, was able to enjoy the Milky Way. So few people see this summer wonder and it reminded me again that the best things in life are free.
The second nebula to receive my efforts was the Cocoon. Less patient, I only spent 5 minutes on this one. I cropped it a bit to show the dark nebula Barnard 168 (B168) which forms a dark lane that surrounds the cluster forming the appearance of a trail behind the Cocoon. Like the Elephant it is an emission nebula, aka IC 5146, and the central star that lights it formed about 100,000 years ago. Click on for a larger image.
