Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)  ·  Contains:  GL Cep  ·  LBN 451  ·  LBN 452  ·  LDN 1093  ·  LDN 1098  ·  LDN 1099  ·  LDN 1105  ·  TYC3974-319-1  ·  TYC3974-347-1  ·  TYC3974-471-1  ·  TYC3974-90-1  ·  TYC3975-10-1  ·  TYC3975-100-1  ·  TYC3975-101-1  ·  TYC3975-1108-1  ·  TYC3975-1242-1  ·  TYC3975-1374-1  ·  TYC3975-1522-1  ·  TYC3975-172-1  ·  TYC3975-1826-1  ·  TYC3975-1826-2  ·  TYC3975-1827-1  ·  TYC3975-213-1  ·  TYC3975-246-1  ·  TYC3975-292-1  ·  TYC3975-303-1  ·  TYC3975-309-1  ·  TYC3975-315-1  ·  TYC3975-345-1  ·  TYC3975-39-1  ·  And 18 more.
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IC1396A The Elephant Trunk, Dale A Chamberlain
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Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
IC1396A The Elephant Trunk, Dale A Chamberlain
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Description

IC 1396A is a dark, dense globule commonly referred to as the Elephant's Trunk nebula. It appears at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim, which is the surface of the dense cloud illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) just to the east of IC 1396A.

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. It is located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light-years from Earth. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity.

This image uses the Hubble palette with narrowband filters for hydrogen alpha, oxygen III, and sulfur II.

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