IC1396

2,200 light years away in Cepheus lies IC1396, a vast sprawl of faint nebulosity that occupies five moon diameters of sky as seen from Earth. I imaged this during the evening of Sept. 20th 2006, using the SXV-H9 through a 135mm Zeiss lens I picked up at a boot sale for £3.

22 X 4 minute subs were taken in 2x2 binned mode, and processed in API4Win. 16 flats/flat darks and 16 dark frames were used in calibration. The final stacked and calibrated frame was Gaussian stretched and Van Clittert deconvoluted using the API4Win default settings, to give the final monchrome image below. The top image is a "false colour" one put together in Paint Shop Pro, just because I can. I think I prefer the monochrome one (click on the images for larger views).

The formation called "The Elephant's Trunk", a curious column of bright and dark nebulosity, is clearly visible just right of centre (north is up, west is to the right). The bright star in the northeast part of the image is Mu Cephei, Herschel's "Garnet Star".