Emission nebula
Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC1396)
In Cepheus (Cep) • Magnitude 7.5 • 2.8 degrees
Open the free AstroPlanner with Elephant’s Trunk Nebula pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
A dark, dense dust pillar within a larger Ha complex in Cepheus.
Elephant’s Trunk Nebula at a glance
| Catalog IDs | I 1396 |
| Type | Emission nebula |
| Constellation | Cepheus (Cep) |
| Right ascension | 21h 37m 41s |
| Declination | +57° 29' 24" |
| Apparent magnitude | 7.50 |
| Surface brightness | 15.0 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 170.0 × 140.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 78° |
| Best imaging months | Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov |
How to image Elephant’s Trunk Nebula
Elephant’s Trunk Nebula sits in the constellation Cepheus at right ascension 21h 37m 41s and declination +57° 29' 24". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window. As an emission nebula, Elephant’s Trunk Nebula responds very well to dual-narrowband filters under city skies.