Featured Photograph
Elephant Trunk Nebula
© 2026 Klaus Brasch
Here is my latest image of the Elephant Trunk Nebula in the much larger IC 1396 region. It was taken with an Askar 185-mm APO refractor at f/5.6, through IDAS LPS V4 and Optolong LQ filters, with a spectrally modified Canon 6D Mark II DSLR at ISO 4000. Cumulative exposure was about 20 minutes. Images were stacked in Affinity Photo2, processed in Hubble Palette mode in Astro Wizard and finalized in Photoshop CS.
IC 1396 is one of the largest emission nebulae in the far northern sky some 2400 lights years from us in Cepheus. It contains several complex objects, including red supergiant Mu Cephei, several double stars, as well as the dark nebula van den Bergh 142, nicknamed the Elephant Trunk, and just south of that the dark nebula Barnard 161. Many other dark nebulae line its southern edge, and the associated cluster Trumpler 37.
The Elephant trunk region can be glimpsed with a large amateur telescope under really dark, transparent skies.
Klaus Brasch
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Saturday, October 17, 2026 (Moved from October 24th)
Presenter: William Sheehan
Title: Roaming the Dark Skies of a World Lit Only by Fire: Astronomical Glimpses from the Upper Paleolithic
Description: This will be effectively the way that members of our species who painted the caves of the Upper Paleolithic, including the Pleiades on the ceiling in the Hall of the Aurochs at Lascaux, viewed the astronomical objects of their world. I hope to invoke a bit given my background in neuroscience the likelihood that they were wired rather differently from us, and had a very different experience of the world around them, which we could hardly imagine. I would like for this to be attended not only by CAS members but also warmly invite members of the Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition to what I hope will be a pleasant evening of telling tales around the campfire.
Bio: William Sheehan is a retired psychiatrist, astronomy historian and author, and amateur astronomer. He has written 30 books including, most recently, "Solar Eclipses," "The Solar System" (with Cliff Cunningham), "Parallel Lives of Astronomers: Percival Lowell and Edward Emerson Barnard," "Space Age Generation" (with Klaus Brasch), "Discovering Mars" (with Jim Bell), "Discovering Pluto" (with Dale P. Cruikshank"), "Northern Arizona Space Training" (with Kevin Schindler), etc., etc. He is a long-time contributor to Sky and Telescope and the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, and has contributed a chapter to Astronomy and Philosophy: Conceptual and Methodological Foundations and Challenges (Cambridge U Press, 2026).
CAS Monthly Meetings and Astronomical Programs are held the
Saturday closest to the Full Moon at the Mars Hill Campus of
Lowell Observatory, Hendricks Center for Planetary Studies
Auditorium (6:45 pm - 8:00 pm), unless otherwise noted followed
by refreshments, and informal discussion. Meetings are open and free
to the public.
