Elephants Trunk Nebula - From a Newbie

[Colorado CJ]

Elephants Trunk Nebula

This is my first "difficult" DSO I've tried to capture. I shot this last night from my backyard, during a half moon and with plenty of light pollution.

Stellarvue SV80 Access
Pentax K1 (unmodified)
EQ6-R Pro

64 subs at 180 seconds each shot at 800 ISO (total of 192 minutes)

 

[JimFox]

Pretty nice work Andrew! The center looks a bit odd compared to the rest of the image. Overall a fun photograph!

 

[Ben Egbert]

Very impressive.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Elephants Trunk Nebula

This is my first "difficult" DSO I've tried to capture. I shot this last night from my backyard, during a half moon and with plenty of light pollution.

Stellarvue SV80 Access
Pentax K1 (unmodified)
EQ6-R Pro

64 subs at 180 seconds each shot at 800 ISO (total of 192 minutes)

This is indeed not the easiest target to capture, especially given your constraints with regard to light pollution and camera response. This is actually a great result given those circumstances. This object imaged in natural color looks quite a bit different than Dan's narrowband captured image that was presented in what is effectively the Hubble palette i think...That having been said, it is possible your white balance is a little off. But not a big issue for a first try.

I do not yet have any sort of a presentable image of this fascinating region yet myself. it is a great target that looks good at both widefield and with more and more magnification.

ML

 

[Daniel Drew]

This is indeed not the easiest target to capture, especially given your constraints with regard to light pollution and camera response. This is actually a great result given those circumstances. This object imaged in natural color looks quite a bit different than Dan's narrowband captured image that was presented in what is effectively the Hubble palette i think...That having been said, it is possible your white balance is a little off. But not a big issue for a first try.

I do not yet have any sort of a presentable image of this fascinating region yet myself. it is a great target that looks good at both widefield and with more and more magnification.

ML

I agree! This was nicely taken and I think it's neat to see a different visual range perspective of it. You get to notice the darker regions a bit more. I wonder if a Dehaze tool in Photoshop or Lightroom might help bring some more contrast in the center. Nice capture!