The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC 1396A) is a twisted sinuous structure of interstellar gas and dust that we see back-lit and ionized by intense radiation coming from a nearby massive star. Red light from ionized hydrogen makes it stand out amid the other streams and swirls of dark nebulae.
The Elephant’s Trunk is about 2,400 lightyears away and extends about 25 lightyears, or almost 150 trillion miles left to right.
Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (60 min total exposure Oct 23, 2022)
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is a small part of the much larger IC 1396 emission nebula that is more than 100 light years across.
(Note the faint line that goes from the bottom edge to the top edge about 1/3 of the way from the left edge of the image. This is the track of a faint satellite that passed through the field of view during the long exposure. The profusion of artificial satellites is becoming a serious problem for astronomers.)
Besides the resemblance to an elephant’s trunk, to me the nebula suggests a battering ram that has perhaps punched a hole in the tapestry of the background Milky Way stars – that hole being the dark nebula B161 near the right hand edge of the image. What do you think – Elephant’s Trunk or Battering Ram? Or something else?