Elephant's Trunk Nebula
IC 1396
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is 2,400 light-years away from us. The ionization source is the star in the bottom center, HD 206267. The “trunk” itself is an active star formation region. There is at least one young star there that is less than 100,000 years old. Unfortunately that star is out of reach for our equipment. However, two slightly older ones (1 million years) are visible in the central hole in the trunk.
The nebula itself is mostly Hydrogen gas, like most nebulae. This picture was made in the Sulphur-II (red), Hydrogen-α (green) and Oxygen-III (blue) wavelengths.
The star in the top left corner is the Garnet star, a hypergiant. It is 100,000x brighter than our Sun and has a radius 1,000x larger. For comparison, that is larger than the orbit of Jupiter. It has already used up all of its Hydrogen fuel, currently fusing Helium into Carbon and is towards the end of its lifetime. It will become a supernova, likely in this century:
- Hydrogen fusion: done
- Helium fusion: almost done
- Carbon fusion: < 100 years
- Neon fusion: 1 month
- Oxygen fusion: 1 day
- Silicon fusion: 4 hours
25 August, 2024 version (SHO, panel 1)
31 July, 2024 version (HOO, panel 1)
This picture was made in the Hydrogen-α (deep red) and Oxygen-III (cyan) wavelengths.
Weather
Keograms for the imaging sessions (marked with yellow):
Video from 2024-07-29:
Video from 2024-07-30:
Video from 2024-09-07:
Technical details
Details | |
---|---|
Telescope | Skywatcher Esprit 100ED (f/5.5) |
Filter | Astrodon LRGB Gen2 E-Series |
Coma corrector | - |
Field flattener | Skywatcher Esprit (1x) |
Camera | QHYCCD 268m, -15°C/-5°C, Mode 5, Gain 56, Offset 5 |
Resolution | 7654x6104 (mosaic) |
Light frames | H: 36 (300s), 3h |
O: 32 (300s), 2h40m | |
S: 60 (300s) 5h | |
Panel 1 total 10h40m | |
H: 35 (300s), 2h55m | |
O: 14 (300s), 1h10m | |
Panel 2 total 4h5m | |
14h45m grand total | |
Flat frames | 16 each |
Darkflat frames | - |
Dark frames | - |
Bias frames | - |
Location | Kalkalpen Nationalpark, Austria |
Local time | 2024-07-29 23:03 - 02:33 (36 frames, panel 1) |
2024-07-30 22:18 - 01:14 (32 frames, panel 1) | |
2024-08-23 21:20 - 00:32 (27 frames, panel 1) | |
2024-08-24 21:38 - 00:45 (33 frames, panel 1) | |
2024-09-07 21:40 - 04:18 (49 frames, panel 2) | |
Field of View | 2°58' x 2°22' (rotation 90°) |
Image Center | 21h38m58s +57°28'17 |