Located in the constellation Cepheus, the Elephant Trunk Nebula, also known as IC 1396, is one of the most iconic objects in the sky. It’s huge at 20 light-years in width! Imagine that–light, which travels at 186,000 miles/second, would take 20 years to cross the entire Elephant Trunk Nebula. Does anybody want to do the math and figure out how many miles wide that is? The answer is below. I don’t even think I can pronounce that number correctly.
117,572,507,463,672 miles
Although it’s that many miles wide, it’s also 2,400 light-years away from Earth, which is why it fits in the frame of my photograph, which is done using a very short telescope like my Redcat 51.
Past Attempts at IC 1396
I’ve taken the Elephant Trunk twice before. It was one of the first objects I shot in 2022 when I started astrophotography. Why did I choose this one to begin with? I only had a Redcat 51 telescope and wanted something that filled the entire frame. I researched different nebulas with my equipment specs on Telescopious and found it to be a perfect fit.
This picture, taken in 2022, was my last photo of the Elephant Trunk Nebula before this new one. At the time, my processing skills were not as good as they are today. I was using a Skyguider Pro as my mount, meaning I had to manually find this in the sky, which took about 45 minutes. Let’s not discuss what meridian flips were like! I used a color camera (ASI533MC) instead of my current mono camera. I processed the above photo entirely in Photoshop; I even stretched it in Photoshop.
A Great Object for Beginners
This is an amazing target for anybody beginning their journey in astrophotography. Most people recommend that beginners start with a wide-field telescope like the Redcat 51, which is perfect for this since it’s gigantic. A wide-field telescope is affordable and forgiving, which is why it’s recommended for beginners.
As a beginner, you likely don’t have the money to buy an expensive mount and guiding equipment. Shooting objects with a larger telescope requires exactly that. The larger the telescope, the better the mount you need, and mounts are not cheap. I started off with a star tracker as my mount, which was $400 and could handle about 11 pounds. This thing would not handle anything more than the Redcat 51, which came in at 7 pounds with all my equipment. It was a perfect fit, and it really allowed me to learn the ropes of astrophotography, as time-consuming as it was.
Elephant Trunk Nebula 2024
I had my current rig in 2023 but didn’t want to shoot this again at that point–I decided I would do it in 2024, and here we are! I used the Redcat 51 again for this photo since it frames it perfectly. Remember, the Redcat 51 is not just a beginner telescope; it will likely stay with you throughout your astrophotography journey. It’s great for mosaics of even larger objects. I shot it using an ASI533MM mono camera and narrowband filters for hydrogen-alpha (Ha), oxygen III (Oiii), and sulphur II (Sii). Most importantly, this was processed in Pixinsight to get the most out of it. Below is a breakdown of the integration time for this project.
| Filter | Integration Time |
|---|---|
| Sulphur II | 3h 33m |
| Hydrogen Alpha | 4h 12m |
| Oxygen III | 3h 18m |
| RGB | 30m |
| Total | 11h 33m |
Despite a respectful amount of integration time, having my best equipment, and much more experience, I still feel this could have been better. I was hoping for a much grander display of nebulosity in all channels, particularly in the Oiii channel, but it may have taken me much more integration time to get there. You can see the Elephant Trunk part of the nebula as it screams out at you. Another thing I love about this photo is the RGB stars. Most of the time, I feel the RGB stars don’t make a huge difference, but in this photo, I think they stole the show.
Pixinsight Steps
For the most part, I followed my Pixinsight process. However, there were a few things that I should call attention to that were outside of this process:
- I used masking to try and bring out parts that were not standing out (looking at you, Oiii).
- I did some color balancing that was a departure from the “natural” image that Pixinsight produced. Sometimes, images need to be color-balanced if they don’t look right. I used the red, green, and blue sliders in the curve transformation process.
- I used a good amount of saturation to make the colors pop
All of the above can be folded generically into the curves transformation step in my process, but I wanted to call them out as they were a bit beyond what I usually do.
Conclusion
This was challenging to process. I think I reworked it two or three times before I finally got something I was happy with. I still feel it could have been better, but I’m happy with the result.
This is a great first object to shoot if you are new to astrophotography. It’s one of the reasons I chose it as my second thing ever to shoot.
Clear skies!