IC1396 is a star-forming region of hydrogen and dust in the constellation Cepheus – the mythological King of Aethiopia whose wife was Cassiopeia and who were parents to Andromeda (in case you are into Greek Myths.) The IC1396 region is huge; it is many times larger than what you see here. This tiny portion of the cloud is often called the Elephant Trunk Nebula. Throughout this frame, there are dark regions. These are dust lanes. The ionized Hydrogen glows red, and it forms a halo around the dark elephant’s trunk dust lane.
This image is the composite of 101, 6-minute exposures (~10 hours of imaging time). The 6-minute sub-frames were collected on clear nights from 9/14/22 to 9/21/22 through the 130mm astrograph fitted with a 4-band, narrowband filter.
The entire star-forming region is pictured here. The Elephant Trunk piece is the tiny dark area on the left side of the image that looks somewhat like a flower.