Elephant's Trunk Nebula (SHO) (Massimo Di Fusco)

Elephant's Trunk Nebula (SHO)

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2400 light years away from Earth. The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant's Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright massive star (HD 206267) that is 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 100000 years) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity.
The combined action of the light from the massive star ionizing and compressing the rim of the cloud, and the wind from the young stars shifting gas from the center outward lead to very high compression in the Elephant's Trunk Nebula. This pressure has triggered the current generation of protostars.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7944426
PixInsight job	MTDAEF4G3G9EQK00ERLVMV7A6J0UV4MM
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	21h35m26s.45
RA (top/left)	21h39m43s.39
RA (top/right)	21h39m41s.39
RA (bottom/right)	21h31m03s.88
RA (bottom/left)	21h31m16s.68

Dec (center)	+57°29′42″.1
Dec (top/left)	+57°06′39″.2
Dec (top/right)	+57°53′36″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	+57°52′12″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+57°05′14″.3

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