IC1396 Elephant's trunk Nebula

[Carole]

Taken during a short let up in the rain at the Salisbury Star Party Dorset on 25-10-11
36 x 5mins 800 ISO, Modified Canon 450D no filter on NEQ6
SW ED120, guided with PHD and QHY5

(Pre and post Meridian flip) but the flip didn't line the frames up the same (see my post in technical) so had to crop the frame shift.

My first attempt at this object.

It's on the gallery if you want to look at the larger size.

[Carole]

Forgot to mention there was a thick ground mist 4 - 5' deep which we could see by the lights of the cafeteria (which were turned off when it shut).  I had dew heaters on, plus my wind shields around the scope (as in Kelling) and was imaging at the Zenith, so hopefully one or all of these factors helped.

Carole

[MarkS]

Elephant's Trunk is a tough one to do well.  Yours has come out reasonably well, if a little noisy.  The damp conditions would certainly have been against you.

You have plenty of scale there, so I would suggest binning it down to a smaller size to reduce the noise a bit.

Mark

[Carole]

binning it down to a smaller size to reduce the noise a bit

Not sure how to do that Mark, please elucidate.

Thanks

Carole

[JohnP]

Hi Carole - looks very nice if not a bit too brown (at least on my new monitor).... I remember trying this back in 2008 from Les Granges & even with the great skies down there I found it an absolute pig to process so you have done very well.

Nice one,  John.

[RobertM]

Very nice Carole but I agree with John (from my crummy work monitor) and also think the brighter stars seem too bloated.  Plenty of stars and nice resolution there though and guiding looks good.

Robert

[Carole]

Thanks John and Robert.

a bit too brown

Yes a couple of other people have mentioned that on other forums.  Trouble is I was not sure what it was supposed to look like and thought the brown/red was due to nebulosity in that area, especially as I have got the lower left reasonably blackish.  

an absolute pig to process

As you say John it wasn't the easiest of images to process.  

the brighter stars seem too bloated

do you think so Robert, I thought they looked OK.  There are halos around quite a few of them, and I did my usual method of hanging onto the white point and not letting it stretch with the rest of the image.  I suppose the really damp conditions might have something to do with it. 

This is the full frame.
http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10047/Elephants_Trunk_20_saturation_36_x_5mins_800_ISO_25-10-11_CROP.jpg

Looks like I might need to do a re-process and see if I can come up with something better.

Carole

[Carole]

Is the colour a bit better in this version?
Will have to do a reprocess to try to change the stars (if I can) and don't have time today unfortunately.



Carole

[Fay]

So many stars there, Carole, a nice Elephant

[Carole]

Thanks Fay.

Carole