IC 1396 (Index Catalog), also known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula, is an extremely large emission nebula in the constellation Cepheus, spanning on a region over 6 times the size of te full moon! IC 1396 is a stellar nursery 2 400 light years away from Earth, and the new stars that it gives birth to light up the gas from which they came out of, through a process called ionization, which makes the gas give off light. The nebula also hides inside it one of the largest stars known to date in the milky way: the red supergiant Mu Cephei (μ Cephei). If it was placed at the center of the solar system, its radius would go up to Saturn’s orbit, which is of about 1.4 billion kilometers! Its radius is therefore about 1 420 times that of the sun for a mass of 25 fold the sun’s! This huge hydrogen gas cloud truly is amazing an amazing sight.

See you next week for another nebula,
Clement

Image Credit: Canada France Hawaii Telescope