IC 1396 In Cepheus

IC 1396 is a huge (170 x 140 arcmin) hydrogen-alpha emission nebula at the base of Cepheus and contains many interesting dust cloud lanes, including the "elephant's trunk" at the 9 o'clock position at the left. North is down in this image. This object's size requires a very short focal length telescope or a moderate telephoto lens. I used the latter for this image. Winter is a poor season for imaging Cepheus because it is low on the horizon most of the night, but in H-alpha light, most light pollution is invisible. You can see an older film image here and a more recent RRGB CCD image here.

Date	2003-02-02
Scope	Nikkor 180 mm telephoto at f/4 on ST-10XME (Mandel Adapter) and CFW-8A color wheel. Piggybacked on the 1200 GTO mount and guided with the ST-4 guider on a separate guide scope.
Exposure	1x1 binning with regular Custom Scientific SBIG 3 nm H-alpha filter in SBIG CFW-8 filter wheel.
Processing	Raw frames debloomed with Wodaski's Debloomer plug-in. Stacked, combined, and DDP applied in MaxIm 3.09. Stretched with levels and curves in PhotoShop 7.0.

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