Hello everyone,

I'd like to introduce you to a rather graphic nebula in summer: IC1396, better known as the Elephant Trompe. My father sees it more as a woman with a vaporous face. But what about you?

In any case, this image was taken in rather poor conditions. It's very low on the horizon, and shot in the presence of a very distracting moon. So why did you image it? Firstly, because it gave me pleasure (and that's important in astro photography!). Secondly, I was looking for a target I could follow all night long. And with the galaxy season, such targets don't exist at my narrow-band focal length. So I spent two nights on this object.

In terms of processing, I'm very happy because I really took care of my pre-processing. For the first time, I used dark flats, which solved the problem of flats overcorrecting my images. So the sky background is much cleaner, whereas in my other image - the Rosette - I wasn't convinced by the rendering of my FDC.

I've also improved the tilt, but that's still something to work on! Maybe I'll fall for Wanderer Astro's Electronic Tilt Adjuster, which lets you automatically manage tilt directly in NINA via a sequence. Very tempting!

In terms of processing, I kept it simple this time. RC-Astro in light mode just to slightly improve sharpness without going overboard (I don't like artificially beautiful rendering). Then I used noise reduction a little, but quietly, otherwise it looks pretty fake. A little noise is part of the charm of astro images, I think...

Next, histogram enhancement with MultiscaleAdaptiveStretch, which does a great job, especially now that you can input the background. I find it handles the image's overall dynamics much better. To be tested on targets that may be more delicate in this respect.

Finally, LRGBCombination for HOO rendering. Creation of a mask with RangeSelection to highlight the nebula's OIII (via CurvesTransformation with curve “b”). A very discreet OIII, by the way, as I had very little signal. Next, another mask for the Ha.

Adding stars via PixelMath and the little formula I like:

~(~$T*~$T_stars)

Finished on Photoshop and poof, there it is.

All in all, I spent maybe 30-45 min on it, and I must admit I really enjoyed it. With the Rosette, I'd gone to a lot of trouble to get the extensions out (which I also enjoyed), but this time I wanted to keep it simple 🙂

So much for the gear:

SQA85, SkyEye62AM (IMX455 mono), Avalon M-Uno

Processing : Pix and Photoshop

Acquisition : NINA en auto

Exposure: 11h in Ha, 6h in OIII (really not enough, but okay).

I hope you like the image! I've also attached a few crops. The 63 MP definition allows for nice zooms, and the full frame is very pleasant to browse through, if ever!

Have a nice day

Full on astrobin: https://app.astrobin.com/u/Alien?i=ckk0z5#fullscreen

Small crop for details:

A cosmic frog?