Good turn out at the DAO last night (August 5, 2007). It was nice to see so many members out and about. Carrying on with my study of dark nebulae, I pointed my telescope at IC 1396, a massive nebula located in Cepheus. B160, B161, B162, B163, B365, B366, and B367 represent the most conspicuous dark nebulae in this image.

Always interesting visually is the Garnet Star ( Cephei) with its deep orange hue. Also of interest in this picture is vdB 142, a dark nebula a.k.a. the Elephant Trunk. North is to the left in this image.

IC 1396 - August 5, 2007
Location: DAO, old 16" site.
Optics: Borg 77EDII at f/4.3
Camera: Canon 20Da on Kenko SkyMemo
Exposures: 108 light frames of 45 sec, ISO 800. 1 hour and 21 minutes.
Process: Calibrated with 30 darks and 20 flats in ImagesPlus. Combined using MinMax Excluded. Colour balance. Screen applied in Photoshop.