Elephant's Trunk

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is over 20 light years long and can be found running through IC 1396, a young star cluster embedded within a cloud of glowing, ionised gas in the Cepheus constellation.

The Elephant's Trunk is composed of cool interstellar dust and gas, which blocks out light on its way to Earth and leaves behind a long, thin silhouette that gives the nebula its name (and makes it one of many nebulae that look like animals).

Pockets of dust and gas like these make for perfect stellar nurseries and are consequently subject to energetic bouts of star formation deep within.

Image aligned, integrated and colour mapped by Arc Fortnight, original data downloaded from Telescope.live