Astrophoto: IC 1396 by John R. Taylor

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John R. Taylor was able to pull off a nice image of the IC 1396 despite the not so good viewing conditions in his area. He captured this photo on October 16, 2011 from his back garden in semi-rural Kent in the UK.

“My northern view is very restricted by trees making this available for just a couple of hours either side of the meridian. I had to wait a good while but I finally managed a decent run at it.”

IC 1396 is an emission nebula which contains glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds. About 3,000 light-years from Earth, this nebula hosts the formation of new stars. The Elephant’s Trunk nebula can be found in this region.

The image was taken with an Atik 314l+ through an Orion ED80 carbon fibre triplet on a Skywatcher HEQ5. Four guiding, he used a QHY5 camera, Skywatcher ST80 and Maxim DL5. Here are some of the technical details provided by John:
x6 10 minute Ha
x8 10 minute OIII
x12 10 minute SII
Total exposure time 4 hours 20 minutes
Processed in Pixinsight & Photoshop CS5

Check out John’s Flickr page for more photos.

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