The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is an elongated dark globule within the emission nebula IC 1396 in the constellation of Cepheus. Located at a distance of 2,450 light-years, the globule is a condensation of dense gas that is barely surviving the strong ionizing radiation from a nearby massive star. The globule is being compressed by the surrounding ionized gas. [from NASA/JPL]

This is a narrowband composite with 24 hours total exposure time split into 16 Ha, 14 OIII, 18 SII subs with 30 min. each. After some tests, I think a vibrant color scheme fits this target best. There is room for improvement in the post-processing, particularly the OIII channel has significantly more noise than the others. Therefore, I used the clean Ha data as luminance and the color information from the combined and Ha, SII, and OIII channels.