Elephant Trunk Nebula in IC 1396 in Cepheus

This dark nebula, so named because of its visual appearance, is just one part of the much larger emission nebula IC 1396. It is around 2400 lightyears distant and the dark nebula contains a number of very young stars shining in the infrared. The bright rim is the result of ionisation by the massive bright star near the right-hand edge of the image. This star HD 206267 shines at magnitude 5.74 and is the only star in the image that is (just) visible to the naked eye.

This image is the result of just over 6h of data capture, on 5 evenings over the period November 2020 to January 2021.

ZWO ASI071 MC Pro colour camera, through a Teleskop-Service 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien reflector.

Date: 06/01/2021

Location: Horsham, West Sussex

Photographer: Graham Wilcock

Elephant Trunk Nebula in IC 1396 in Cepheus

This dark nebula, so named because of its visual appearance, is just one part of the much larger emission nebula IC 1396. It is around 2400 lightyears distant and the dark nebula contains a number of very young stars shining in the infrared. The bright rim is the result of ionisation by the massive bright star near the right-hand edge of the image. This star HD 206267 shines at magnitude 5.74 and is the only star in the image that is (just) visible to the naked eye.

This image is the result of just over 6h of data capture, on 5 evenings over the period November 2020 to January 2021.

ZWO ASI071 MC Pro colour camera, through a Teleskop-Service 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien reflector.

Date: 06/01/2021

Location: Horsham, West Sussex

Photographer: Graham Wilcock