IC 1396 – The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula

rick

This target is a favorite, and shows beautifully in RGB, SHO, and HOO palettes. With images taken over the course of 3 weeks at the Dark Dragons Observatory, I've been able to produce this with minimal processing.

SHO

The standard "Hubble Palette", with SII mapped to red, Ha mapped to green, and OIII mapped to blue, we can see a lot of good contrast in the clouds at the base of the nebula.

SHO

Acquisition

  • Ha 65x300"
  • OIII 59x300"
  • SII 49x300"

Processing

  • Weighted Batch Preprocessor w/ Cosmetic Correction
  • Crop
  • Multiscale Linear Transform each stack
  • Linear Fit to Ha
  • EZ Soft Stretch
  • PixelMath SHO
  • Correct Magenta Stars script
  • Curves Transformation to adjust saturation
  • Histogram Transformation
  • Save as PNG

HOO

Closer to true color is the HOO palette, with Ha mapped to red, and OIII mapped to both blue and green equally.

HOO

Acquisition

  • Ha 65x300"
  • OIII 59x300"

Processing

  • Weighted Batch Preprocessor w/ Cosmetic Correction
  • Crop
  • Multiscale Linear Transform each stack
  • Linear Fit to Ha
  • EZ Soft Stretch
  • PixelMath HOO
  • Curves Transformation to adjust saturation
  • Histogram Transformation
  • Save as PNG

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