IC 1396 is the immense star forming gas and dust cloud surrounding the triple star HD 206267 , which lights it up. The star is so enormous it’s solar wind radiation is shredding distant stars.
IC 1396a is the “Elephant trunk” dark dust cloud nebula in the low center of frame.
A close up image at 900mm with Astro camera and telescope.
Any comments appreciated.
asi533 camera with gt71 scope.
PP in Pixinsight, Photoshop, Affinity in RGB color
Spectacular Dan! No nits from me.
That’s wonderful Dan. I need to catch up on these astrophotos you’ve been posting, you are getting amazing results. I think I see that elephant trunk it’s named after.
If you’ve already answered this point me where, but how do you like Pixinsight? I was shooting the Milky Way at Lost Lake last week, trying to get some experience with my 20mm f/1.8 lens. I learned that the lens is much sharper at 2.5 than 1.8, and I’m thinking of playing with multiple images taken at the 2.5 and compositing them to get a better signal to noise ratio. Would Pixinsight work well for that?
Wait, what? That’s crazy!
Looks good as always, I very much enjoy seeing these images as they show just how small we are.
Excellent image. Critique?
No can do as it’s a solid three thumbs up image! 
Thanks, John
Pixinsight is fairly complicated, the Astro version of Photoshop, I think a simple basic free stack program like Deep Sky stacker for windows or Starry sky stacker for Mac, (you need to check me)
would do you better.
Unless you use a tracker though, the land would be a mess although the sky would stack.
Milky way photos with land are best with single shot exposures. The earth spins too fast to stack stars and land together…You can stack the stars for good results and blend with a still of land.
I have the Nikon 20mm f1.8 if yours the same, I shoot the milky way wide open.
Iso 3200 max and 15-20 sec, max.
Thanks again, a nice star tracker can be had for a few hundred dollars and open a new world to you!
A tracker and a cheap 135mm lens with a DSLR or mirrorless and you can be in deep space.
Nice detail and an interesting object. I love the centered composition here, with the bright star as an anchor. I think the RGB palette works well her, with the blues and cyans against the reds.
@John_Williams, stacking is best done with tracking to keep pin-registered alignment, but Deep Sky Stacker or Starry Landscape Stacker and Starry Sky Stacker (and other similar programs) can be amazing for aligning and noise-reducing a few untracked exposures.
PI is for dim deep sky objects where you need to shoot many hours of long (minutes) tracked exposures and then do some very complex noise reduction with “dark” and “bias” frames and lens corrections with “flat” frames, to apply to the “light” object" frames. The NR is necessary because of the very low signal to noise ratio of long exposures for dim objects. Then you use a set of complex correction modules to bring out tonal detail and make various corrections. It’s a different world and a very complex process.
Trackers are amazing but to get the best results you’ll need to do very careful polar alignment, which can be a chore in itself.
Thanks so much @Dan_Kearl and @Diane_Miller ! I’ll check out the programs you mentioned, and keep playing. I have Milky Way images taken in the past, but would like to build a larger selection taken with the full-frame camera I now have. I’ll keep experimenting!
An amazing image! I like a lot the “finger” pointing towards the bright star.
