The Elephant's Trunk Nebula, otherwise known as IC1396a, normally refers specifically to the dark globule visible just to the right of the relatively bright star near the centre of this image. IC1396 itself is the wider region of nebulosity shown here, which can be found in the constellation Cepheus.

More information about this object can be found on its Wikipedia page.

The bright star near the top of the frame is usually known as The Garnet Star, or sometimes as Erakis, or μ Cep.

The processing of this image was something I worked on for quite some time in an attempt to pull together all of the things I had learned in processing previous images, and create something beautiful. I have to be honest - I'm not really happy with how this one turned out. The brightest stars have unsightly halos caused by reflections from the filter surface, and I've made far too much use of noise reduction which gives the final result something of a 'painted' look I think.

You can view this image in the WorldWideTelescope by clicking here.