#ic 1396

The Elephant Trunk Nebula and Mu Cephei (SHO)

The Elephant Trunk Nebula is a colossal emission nebula in the Cepheus constellation, named for the curled structure at its center (visible in the bottom left of this image) that resembles an elephant's trunk.

In this mosaic composed of two side-by-side frames, I chose to take a stretched look at the incredible color variance and complex cloud structures visible as you move toward the nebula's edge, as well as the distinct garnet color of its brightest companion star, Mu Cephei. Shot at a focal length of 600mm with a 150mm aperture Newtonian telescope and a ZWO ASI533MM Pro camera, using 7nm bandpass narrowband filters to capture the light emitted from the ionized gases in the nebula.

nebula IC 1396 is a huge star-forming region energized by its bright blue central star and sprawling across hundreds of light-years

(NASA)  The Dust Monster in IC 1396

Image Credit & Copyright: Anis Abdul

Is there a monster in IC 1396? Known to some as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, parts of gas and dust clouds of this star formation region may appear to take on foreboding forms, some nearly human. The only real monster here, however, is a bright young star too far from Earth to hurt us. Energetic light from this star is eating away the dust of the dark cometary globule near the top of the featured image. Jets and winds of particles emitted from this star are also pushing away ambient gas and dust. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a much larger region on the sky than shown here, with an apparent width of more than 10 full moons.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 2017 January 19 

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula in Cepheus