Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
2016-Aug-15
RGB 25x4m, Ha 48x15m, total 17hr
SGP, MaximDL, CPS
NP101is, 0.8x Reducer, STF-8300M
A80Mf, LSX2, EQ8
The Elephant's Trunk is an emission nebula in the constellation Cepheus
This is perhaps the best nebula image I've taken so far from my back yard. The stars came out pretty good and there is lots of detail in the nebula. Seems that the narrowband Ha filter and the RGB filters work together well to block a lot of the light pollution.
It also helped that there are 17 hours of exposure time on this one. I found that the nebula showed up pretty good after only a couple of hours. However, the more exposures I took the better it got. Even the stars improved from the long exposure. For example, the very faint background stars were not even really visible until about the 10 hour mark. But after that they started to emerge from the background noise and as I added more hours the more defined they became.