Photo of the Week for July 1, 2016

For a king, Cepheus doesn’t get a lot of respect. The constellation is often overlooked, especially by beginners, because it doesn’t contain any Messier objects. And yet, it does have several photogenic deep-sky objects, as illustrated by this image of IC1396A by Daniel Meek of Calgary, Alberta. Also known as the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, IC1396A is small portion of the enormous, faint nebula complex, IC1396, located in southern Cepheus.

Daniel made this 11-hour exposure using a QSI 583wsg CCD camera attached to a Celestron Edge 11, 11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.