The Elephant Trunk Nebula in Cepheus

The Elephant Trunk Nebula is a small pillar

of dust and gas located in a large region of

ionized gas in the constellation Cepheus.

Hover over the picture for an annotated version

Date:  11 August 2026

FOV:  45' × 30'

Rotation:  −179.999°

Telescopes:  Celestron C14 SCT (3910mm, f/11) with a Starizona SCT

Coma Corrector/Reducer (2668.5mm, f/7.5) and an

SVBony MK127 Mak-Cass (1500mm, f/11)

Guiding:  ZWO ASI120MM mini mono guide cameras,

SVBony SV165 Mini 40mm f/4 guide scopes

Computer:  ASIair pro Raspberry Pi and ASIair plus

Mount:  ZWO AM7 and AM5 harmonic drives

Cameras:  ZWO ASI6200MC Pro (-10°C) at 100 gain and

ZWO ASI071MC Pro (-10°C) at 90 gain

Pixel size:  3.76 μm and 4.78 μm

Resolution:  2.594 arcsec/pixel

Frames:  66 × 300 seconds Celestron 9.25", Optolong L-eNhance filter,

62 × 300 seconds SVBony MK127 Mak-Cass, Optolong UV/IR cut filter

Stacking:  one hundred twenty eight 300 second frames using Pixinsight

Total Time:  10 hours 40 minutes

Processing:  Pixinsight

preprocessing → L-eNhance×66 and UV/IR×62

LeNh:  MGC, DBE, SPCC, BXT, NXT, StarXT → LinearLeNh

UV/IR:  MGC, DBE, SPCC, BXT, NXT → LinearUVIR

LinearUVIR:  StarXT → LinearUVIR_StarXT

LinearUVIR:  MultiAdaptiveStretch → Stars

PixelMath ~(~LinearLeNh*~LinearUVIR_StarXT) →

LinearStarless, HTS, GHS, MStr, MAS,

PixelMath 0.25*(HTS + GHS + MStr + MAS) → Starless

PixelMath ~(~Stars*~Starless), DynCrop/Scale

Location:  Darling Hill Observatory near Vesper, NY