Stellar Shot of the Week: October 9, 2020
"IC 1396 Elephant Trunk in a Northern Rosette - by Glenn Diekmann"
Congratulations to Glenn Diekmann for taking this week's Stellar Shot!
"The Elephant Trunk Nebula is a sinuous pillar of glowing gas and dust within a larger, circular region of nebulosity. The overall structure reminds me a little of the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2238). It can be found just north of Herschel's famous Garnet Star, a luminous red supergiant, in the constellation Cepheus. HR 8281—the hot, massive star near the center of the image—is ionizing the gas in the entire region and is responsible for sculpting the elephant trunk itself. While collecting data for this image, [my] area was experiencing a heat wave and the sky was filled with the smoke of numerous fires burning in Southern California. Transparency was terrible. That's not an excuse, but…okay, it's an excuse."
(https://www.astrobin.com/35dos9/D/?nc=user)