The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a
concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much
larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation
Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth.
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. Two older (but still young, a
couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live
for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular
cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young
stars may have emptied the cavity. |
