Elephant's Trunk Nebula

Nebula in the constellation Cepheus

Elephant's Trunk Nebula

Emission nebula
Spitzer Space Telescope photo of the nebula
Observation data
Distance	2,400 ly
Constellation	Cepheus
See also: Lists of nebulae

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this articlebyadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Elephant's Trunk Nebula" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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 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. (In the Spitzer Space Telescope view shown, the massive star is just to the left of the edge of the image.) The entire IC 1396 region is ionized by the massive star, except for dense globules that can protect themselves from the star's harsh ultraviolet rays.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[2][3]

Gallery[edit]

• 
  Captured in classic Hubble Palette (Ha/OIII/SII) using a 127mm refractor telescope
• 
  Captured in hydrogen alpha using a 102mm telescope
• 
  Captured in hydrogen alpha and oxygen
• 
  Ha+OIII+SII Hubble palette modified
• 
  Widefield view of the IC1396 nebula in SHO Hubble palette
• 
  Close-up on the nebula
• 

See also[edit]

• List of largest nebulae
• Lists of nebulae

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Media related to Elephant's Trunk Nebula at Wikimedia Commons
• Capturing the Stars, Astrophotography by the Masters IC 1396A. Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-10-13
• Elephant's Trunk Nebula in IC1396 Paul Beskeen Astrophotography. Retrieved 2010-10-13
• IC 1396 in Mapped Color 17 August 2004. Russell Croman Astrophotography. Retrieved 2010-10-13
• IC 1396 in modified SHO 12 September 2016. Richard Pattie.

Stars

Spaceflight

Outer space

Solar System