Friday 7/7/2023 was an unexpectedly clear night. Decided to take advantage of a clear night on the weekend and setup to image The Elephant Trunk Nebula from my backyard. IC 1396 is a large (nearly 3 degrees on the sky) region of ionized gas and dust located in the constellation of Cepheus about 2.400 light-years from Earth. The gas is ionized by the bright star in the center of the image. The Elephant Trunk Nebula (rising from the bottom center of the image, is a concentrated globule of gas and dust that can withstand the violent wind emanating from the central star in the image. The Elephant Trunk Nebula is a star forming region, with young stars contained within it that are about 100,000 years old, first discovered by infrared telescopes in 2003.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 Essential Series Air-Spaced Triplet Refractor
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Filter: Optolong L-eXtreme
Mount: Sky-Watcher USA EQ6-R Pro
Software: NINA, SharpCap Pro, PHD2, and PixInsight

All pre and post processing done in PixInsight. 79 exposures at 180 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 50 ea were stacked. I used a method of processing data collected with Dual Narrowband filters and One-shot Color (OSC) cameras that provides a Hubble Palette (SHO) color map scheme that was provided to me by a mentor in our local astronomy club (Buffalo Astronomical Association).