IC1396 - Elephant Trunk

click here for larger image

IC1396 - Elephant Trunk

This is a composite picture using narrow band filters that transmit the the light from sodium, hydrogen and oxygen adoms. Instead of using the traditional red, green and blue filters I subsituted the following filters:

Red mapped to Sodium

Green mapped to Hydrogen Alpha (Ha)

Blue mapped to Oxygen (OIII)

Date : 12-18-04

The exposures were done with a Takahashi FSQ (550mm at F5), SBIG ST10ME, AP 900 Goto mount and tracked externally with an SBIG STV.

Exposure Data is:

Date: 12-18-04

Luminance - Ha (6x10min exposures) 2 bin

Red - Sodium (4x10min exposures) 2 bin

Green - Ha (6x10min exposures) 2bin

Blue - OIII (5x10min exposures) 2bin

Processing - Calibrated in Maxim DL with darks, flats, bias.  -20d temperature regulation. Registered all exposures togeather then stacked each channel.  Imported each channel in Adobe CS and copied into each color channel of RGB.  Adjusted curves and levels to bring out detail in each channel.  Adjusted channels relative to each other to make most stars white.  Copied Ha image into the luminance fame and final adjusted curves and levels.  Slight sharpening in the luminance channel.

[Home][About myself][Observatory][Index][Photo's][Links]