The Elephant Trunk nebula is one of my favorite targets I've captured this year. I used my newer Chroma narrowband filter which are simply incredible in capturing finer details with smaller stars compared to my old ZWO narrowband filters.
This nebula is a concentration of ionized gas and is part of a much bigger nebula complex (IC 1396). Like many other nebula, it's "glowing" from the intense radiation of the new, hot stars shining nearby which makes the predominantly hydrogen cloud glow. You can see a lot of this effect at the very top of the nebula, which is quite literally glowing. This nebula is 2,400 light years away in the constellation Cepheus.
What I love about it is the incredible contrast between the heavy sections of the nebula and the blue-ish background, which is glowing with OIII. It's just stunning to me how this nebula is seemingly stretching out of the dust/gas clouds beneath.
Capture note: This was captured right after we finally got a break from extremely heavy wildfire smoke. The sky cleared out for a few days and was lucky enough to have some time for the capture after not being to image anything for 4 weeks.
Capture details:
Skywatcher Esprit 120ED Super APO Triplet ZWO ASI1600mm-Cool Orion Atlas EQ-G Guiding telescopes: Orion ST80 Guiding cameras :ZWO ASI224MC Software: Adobe Photoshop 2020 , PixInsight 1.8 , DeepSkyStacker (DSS) Deek Sky Stacker 4.2.0, Starnet++ Chroma SHO 1.25" mounted Sesto Senso 2 Electronic Focuser
Chroma HA 3nm - 187x250 Chroma OIII 3nm - 38x250 Chroma SII 3nm - 30x250