The Elephant Trunk Nebula in the Cepheus Constellation is, in my opinion, ridiculously beautiful! As a stellar nursery, it’s the home to new stars, and protostars alike. The red colors come from ionized hydrogen, while the dark blobs are dense clouds of gas and dust. The nebula is illuminated by the bright O-Type star in the center of the picture (HD 206267), whose radiation is exciting the hydrogen in the area making it glow the deep red. (Source: noirlab.edu)

The Elephant Trunk Nebula gets its name from the spire-like cloud rising like an elephant’s trunk (IC 1396A) from the bottom [of this picture]. Being a dense molecular cloud, the trunk itself is littered with a … well … litter of protostars, or stars literally being born. (Author’s note: I tried to use as many iterations of “litter” as possible in that sentence.)

One of my favorite features of the elephant trunk is the small “hole” near the tip of it. When you zoom in, you can see what I assume to be a newly formed star responsible for blowing the dust clouds away from it, forming the little hole. Maybe I’ll have to include another photo someday using more focal length to really zoom in on that active region.