The Elephant’s Trunk
Located about 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus, the “Elephant’s Trunk Nebula” has a distinct “Pillars of Creation” vibe when viewed as a long-exposure, narrowband image in the style of Hubble. Like the “Pillars of Creation” (the Eagle Nebula,) the Elephant’s Trunk is also an area of star formation, containing some young, newly-formed stars. And by new, I mean around 100,000 years old – which is very new by stellar standards!
Visually through a telescope, you only see the brightest parts of this nebula, and it looks quite different. A lot of nebulas have names that don’t really match what they look like in a long exposure photo, and this is one of them!
Processed starless (in the Hubble SHO palette) and also with RGB stars added back in.
