Wide Field IC1396 Region in Cepheus (2023)
Derek O’Keefe
This is an ionized Hydrogen gas region called IC1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. It’s a region where new stars are being born.
Bio: Software engineer and hacker for a large corporation. In my spare time I like to automate a small observatory and monitor variable stars.
Process: The camera and lens was tracked on a Skywatcher star adventurer mount. Kstars and EKOS were used to align, focus and capture all images while monitoring weather.
75x3min exposures were stacked using software called Siril. Basic processing was performed in Siril and starnet++ was used to reduce the sea of stars in this region and highlight the nebula.
The camera was a modified Canon DSLR. The IR filter on the sensor was replaced with a Baader filter to allow transmission of the deep red light from ionized hydrogen at wavelength 656nm.