Elephant's Trunk Nebula
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula IC 1396A taken from Staffordshire, UK by Nigel Armitage in November 2025.
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula IC 1396A 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 nebula is a dark, dense globule that gets its name from 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 multiple star (HD 206267) that is just to the east of the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula.
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.
This is one of my recent pieces of work and contains 101, 3 minute exposures, 5 hours of data.
It was taken in a Bortle 5 Sky.
The equipment used was:
Equipment Used:
Williams Optics FLT-132
ASI ZWO240MC Pro OSC
Opting L Extreem Filter
ZWO AM5
The image was processed using Pixinsight and Photoshop.
Cepheus Constellation Map. Credit: IAU and Sky & Telescope magazine
(Roger Sinnott & Rick Fienberg). License: CC 4