Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Elephant's Trunk in IC 1396

NASA ^ | October 13, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission nebula and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Of course, the cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20 light-years long. This composite was recorded through narrow band filters that transmit the light from ionized hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms in the region. The resulting image highlights the bright swept-back ridges that outline pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas. Such embedded, dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within the obscuring cosmic dust. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit and Copyright: J.C. Canonne, P. Bernhard, D. Chaplain & L. Bourgon]

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[momtothree]

I’ve looked and looked.. not seeing an elephant’s trunk. Cool pics though...

[FredZarguna]

Sabu was sad, the whole tour stunk
The airlines lost the elephant's trunk
The roadies got the rabies and the scabies and the flu
They was low on morale but they was high on [glue]

-- John Prine: Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone

[TigersEye]

I think it’s a pond with a bunch of tadpoles swimming around in it.
The one in the middle just stirred up some mud on the bottom.

[TheOldLady]

Wow! That’s a spectacular picture. I didn’t see the elephant at
first, but then I saw his head and his ears, and then the trunk
just popped out at me after that.

Thank you for the post and ping. Also, The Big One blows up very
well, and all the pretty details can be seen quickly and easily.

It’s really very nicely done.

[dr_lew]

Here's an overlay of the view in my Starry Night Pro 7, rotated and sized to match. I set the time to get approximately the same orientation, and this turned out to be 12:40 AM, at this date in Northern Illinois, but this would be about the same from anywhere along this latitude, local time. The Elephant's Trunk is about 50 degrees above the horizon.

The lines of celestial latitude run vertically, and that's 57.5 degrees north down the middle, bracketed by 57 and 58 degrees. The big green circle is part of the Starry Night display, and marks the Elephant's Trunk region.

[dr_lew]

Since this part of the sky is such ideal position, I decided to see if I could get a shot of it. I ended up doing 30 seconds at 6400 ISO, with my Nikon D5100 200 mm lens, right in my back yard. The sky was clear, but slightly murky.

It might not look like much, but it shows a lot more than I can see with 9X63 binoculars, and mainly it can help you appreciate what it takes to get these APOD shots.