One of the most peculiar features in the emission nebula IC 1396 is the so-called "elephant trunk", a globule of cold, neutral hydrogen gas embedded in hot, ionized plasma. Focus at the peculiar U-shaped feature at the center of the nebula which I imaged in wide-field before! This aggregation of neutral hydrogen is relatively dense - though thinner than the most perfect vacuum on earth. But, the energetic radiation of the surrounding gas is hypothesized to be strong enough to trigger the igintion of new star light...

The funny thing about the picture is the fact that - while I write these lines - it is October 2021, but the shots were taken in 2013. So far, this is my all time high between picture acquisition and publishing! The reason is that the long exposure the picture took required two subsets of series. And the spike orientation of the brighter stars did not perfectly align. It took me quite a while until I figured out that the use of median alignment instead of averaging dramatically improved the result.