My post today is a few minutes past Sept 20th – alas!
For the past week, I have been collecting images of a star-forming region in the constellation Cepheus called IC1396. It is an area of dust and hydrogen. The hot young stars in this region excite the hydrogen gas which glows red in the Hydrogen-alpha spectral line. The resulting illumination contrasts with the dark lanes of light-absorbing dust. The contrast is striking.
My narrowband imaging of this region is as nothing compared to some of the amateur astrophotography images that I have been seeing online this month. Well, astrophotography images, like life and education, are always works in progress. I’ll post my week of images tomorrow (later today, I guess).