This target revisited represents a first for me - a first stab at a mosaic. This is a simple (as if) two panel mosaic of IC1396. Preprocessing was done in PI as well as stitching the panels together - a combination of StarAlignment and GradientMergeMosaic tools. Luckily, I didn't have much in the form of gradients to trouble with (unlike the one I'm working on now - ugh) and I was pleased with how well this went together. After processing the mosaic for each channel (Ha, SII, OIII) I processed starless images of each using StarNet++ and used tonemapping to process from there using PS. Stars were added back and Ha channel was used for luminance.
This expansive nebula, approximately 2400 light years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus, contains gasses and dust irradiated and compressed from a nearby massive star. This has given rise to stellar nurseries throughout the molecular cloud which have blown away surrounding gas and dust into distinct shapes. One such nursery exists in the large globule at the end of the gas plume in this image. Two young stars have expelled gasses around them to form the hole that makes the eye of the Elephant.
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