The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionised gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. The bright rim around the trunk is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionised by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) that is just to the east of IC 1396A. The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. The image is a 4 panel mosaic.
First mosaic I created from 4 panels integrated in AstroPixelProcessor. APP has an excellent and easy to follow process for creating a blended mosaic. 80 mins of data for each panel taken with one shot colour camera and my Optolong L-extreme dual band Hydrogen/Oxygen filter.