Van den Berg 142 Reflection Nebula & IC1396 Emission Nebula in Cepheus

(aka The Elephant Trunk Nebula)

To see the faint detail in this image, adjust your monitor's brightness and contrast to clearly show all 17 steps in this grayscale chart:

Too big? Try this smaller image: ic1396_740x521

Look here for an earlier, wider field image of IC1396/VdB142

Click on this thumbnail to see a wide-field view of the emission nebula IC1396:

Imaging Equipment:

• Telescope: Celestron C11, 11" f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain reduced to f/6.0
• Zeiss II German Equatorial Mount
• Santa Barbara Instrument Group ST-8E NABG CCD camera (1530 x 1020 pixels, 9 x 9mm, monochromatic, 16 bit, 13.8 x 9.2mm array)
• CWF8 color filter wheel with Ha and IR-blocking red, green and blue dichroic filters

Exposure Information:

• Date: Saturday September 7, 2002
• Location: Mt. Pinos, CA
• Elevation: Approx. 8300', OAT +29F
• CCD operating temperature: -32C
• Composition: LRGB with red luminance
• R:R:G:B = 100:100:60:80 minutes. Total exposure time: 240 minutes
• All subexposures were 5 minutes each
• Plate scale: 1.1 arc-sec/pixel

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