The latest area of space that I tried to capture with my telescope is called the "Elephant's Trunk Nebula." In the picture will see what looks like a darker sections that resemble an elephant trunk. Why does it look like this?
Imagine a concentrated area of gas in space and near all that gas is a massive star. The star ionizes that gas and that means we can see that all that gas glowing in the area. Now within that cloud of gas there are pockets of more gas that is super dense. These areas are so dense that even the nearby powerful star cannot penetrate to ionize the gas. That means some of the gas will not appear to be glowing and will instead be dark. The fun part is that that dense area of gas that is protected from ionization forms the shape of an "elephant trunk."
You can easily see this area of gas that is glowing from the largest star in picture. Right in the middle is a shape that resembles an elephant's trunk. That is an area where the gas is so dense that it is protected from ionization. Due to the shape of this dense gas it is commonly called the Elephant's Trunk Nebula.
The picture can also be be found on Astobin.
I took this picture in my backyard and was one of the first times I got to use a light filter called the Optolong L-eXtreme. I was pretty happy with my first use as I do not normally catch as much of the red nebula color like this with only 3 hours of exposure.
The acquisition details for this image were:
The beauty of our heavens never ceases to amaze. Wishing you all clear skies!
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