IC 1396 Elephant's Trunk

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 from Earth. The featured part of the nebula is a dark, dense globule known as IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant's Trunk due to its appearance in visible light wavelengths, where it appears as a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud, which is illuminated and ionized by the very bright, massive star HD 206267, located to the east of IC 1396A. (In this Spitzer Space Telescope image, the massive star is just to the left of the image's edge.) The entire IC 1396 region is ionized by this massive star, except for the dense globules that can shield themselves from the star's harsh ultraviolet radiation.