Elephant's Trunk Nebula

(Also known as: IC 1396)

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. The piece of the nebula on the left of this image is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; commonly called the Elephant’s Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths.

This image is false colour using Hydrogen Alpha, Oxygen III and Sulphur II filters. These exposure stacks are mapped to the Red, Green & Blue channels as follows:

Red: 50% Ha + 50% S2
Green: 50% Ha + 50% O3
Blue: 85% O3 + 15% Ha