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 2,400
light years away from Earth.
[1] 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 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. 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.
New data from last week + old data from 6 weeks ago, stacked, pre and post processed with new techniques in Pixinsight, and touched up in Paintshop Pro for vibrancy and clarity:
35 x 240sec light subs (Last week, L Extreme filter)
35 x 180sec light subs (Six weeks ago, L Enhance filter)
35 auto flats
30 darks for each exposure group
30 dark flats
Stacked, integrated and post processed in Pixinsight and touched up in Paintshop Pro for clarity and vibrancy.
Equipment used: SW ED100
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