IC 1396A Elephant Trunk Nebula in Cepheus

Well that really is superb Anthony! The detail at the centre of the dark area is magnificently caught and just right of centre is a close binary given away by its double diffraction spikes, and the Ha reds are very well rendered.

Quality!

Only one word to describe this picture.
AWESOME
Submitting to S&T??

Love that image Tony. The bar just went a few notches higher up guys.

Awesome shot Anthony!
(I'd love to see some shots of where you shoot from)

but there seems to be a yellow tinge to the far outer right of the image, might be worth cropping that out.

On looking closely at that area Dave I reckon also the bright green line
causing the nearby area to appear more yellowish than it already is
(remember the optical illusion effect of adjoining colours)
There is a star 3/4 of they way down on the right
just on the crop line and part of it's colour spike is slightly greenish.
This is increasing the 'yellow' effect along the right.

To illustrate this
(see if you think there is a difference - I reckon there is and
its much more pronounced full size)

(I hope you don't mind me pawing at your photos here Anthony)



On the white background the colour tinge is less obvious than on the black one.





I would suggest using another colour to frame the image and to even go so far as to say loose the green line altogether.

Still, all only small things..
It's still a classic image!

Very nice image Anto! The colours and nebulosity are stunning. As a comparison, here's the link to Kierans (thread) attempt of the same area of sky (and my lame explanation of the 'truck' bit!):

www.irishastronomy.org/boards/viewtopic....&highlight=trunk

Guys,

I am delighted to see the positive response to this image!

Frank, if you check the histograms, you will see some very slight clipping on the low end for both green and blue and the reason is what you describe above. In fact, this is a common and regular problem with my results and I have yet to pin down the source. When taking my flats, the blue filter produces counts which are about 2000 ADU lower in that part of each sub as compared to the rest (30k ADU against 32k ADU) and in theory it should not be an issue since the purpose of the flats is to correct for such differences. This problem is with the filter itself and not the camera.

I must sit down and see how the problem can be addressed using software designed for gradients, for I suspect this may be a quick and efficient way out of this little mess.

Last night I nailed Herbig-Haro 167 in Cepheus and I hope to have something for everyone in a few hours as I am about to start the processing. I have not been able to find ANY photos of HH167 on the 'net and, as a result, there will be something new and rare for all of us.

Seanie, welcome back and thanks for the heads-up to Kieran's thread .... and your astro-art work.