Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)  ·  Contains:  IC 1396
ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA / IC 1396, Maroun Mahfoud
ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA / IC 1396
Powered byPixInsight

ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA / IC 1396

ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA / IC 1396, Maroun Mahfoud
ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA / IC 1396
Powered byPixInsight

ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA / IC 1396

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

It is called Elephant’s Trunk due to the form of an elephant’s head and trunk. It is a dense region of dust and gas found within the considerably larger star forming region IC 1396 in Cepheus constellation. It is located at a distance of 2,400 light years from Earth.
The upper portion of the elephant’s trunk is backlit by a nearby, very luminous, massive star. This whole region is thought to be a star nursery since it contains a number of stars that are less than 100,000 years old. These baby stars were discovered in the infrared in 2003. Stellar winds from two of the young stars in the curled “trunk” have pushed dust and gas outward to compress the material in the nebula, which is triggering the formation of a new generation of young stars.

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA / IC 1396, Maroun Mahfoud