Photo of the Week for May 3, 2019
Located in southern Cepheus is a large patch of faint nebulosity catalogued as IC1396. It extends south from the deep-red star Mu Cephei, also known as Herschel’s Garnet star. Within that complex of nebulosity there’s a feature known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula (sometimes referred to as IC1396A), believed to be a region of starbirth, similar to the famous “Pillars of Creation” within the Eagle Nebula (M16) in Sagittarius.
Daniel Beaulieu captured this detailed image of the Elephant Trunk from his backyard in Quebec City, Quebec, with a Celestron EdgeHD 800 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (working at f/7 with a reducer lens), Astrodon LRGB filters and Atik 383L+ monochrome CCD camera. The total exposure time was 234 minutes.
