elephant


Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC1396)

It often happens that a photo of a deep space object does not suggest the common name of the object. That is because the name almost always comes from the object’s appearance to a visual observer. The Elephant’s Trunk (the dark path on the right side of the image) is outlined in a bright region that is about all you can see in most telescopes. Because this is a narrowband image showing hydrogen in red and oxygen in blue-green (if there were any oxygen), the appearance is quite different. The entire region is much larger than what is shown here. […]