IC 1396This is a close-up of a region of our galaxy that is has recently formed new stars. The handful of very bright, bluish stars here formed relatively recently - within the last 100 million years or less. But the real "star" of this show is a very bright star embedded in the dark knot on the left.The dark knots are where the cosmic dust clouds are so thick that they obscure our view of the stars and glowing gas behind. The faint orange glow in the knot to the left is all that we see of the intense glow of a bright star embedded within. The ridge of red glowing gas is hydrogen at the edges of these dark clouds, glowing from the intense radiation from the hidden bright blue stars. This part of IC 1396 is sometimes called the Elephant's Trunk nebula - but in this view, the elephant is standing on his (or her) head. |
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