ASTRO: Elephant Trunk in IC 1396

Back in 2012 I reprocessed this one originally done in 2008 but then
never posted it. My filters back then had nasty halos and reflections,
especially for the blue channel. Also that was back when I was using a
focuser that couldn't carry the weight of my camera so it would sag
putting part of the image out of focus (lower left in this case). I
really should retake it but there's so much I've never taken to do I
just never seem to get around to it. While this one is often called vdB
142 that designation only refers to the very small blue reflection
nebula around HD 239710.

Anyway here's the reprocessed version.

I took this one differently than anything I've ever done before or
since. The luminance channel is pseudo luminance made from the RGB
images. Then three 30 minute H alpha frames were blended into the
pseudo lum to make a super pseudo lum image. The H alpha was also
blended 80% into the red channel and 20% into the blue channel. Why I
did it this way I can't recall and didn't note. Nor do I know why I
never tried it again. Maybe it only worked for this object.

14" LX200R @ f/20, Pseudo L=3x30'+6x10', R=3x30*80%+2x10, G=2x10',
B=3x30'*20%+2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
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Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net