The Elephant's Trunk nebula is a column of gas and dust in a much larger region of ionised gas, identified as IC1396. The dark globule at the top of this column gained its name due to its similarity to an elephant's head. A massive star, above the globule, is illuminating the rim and the fierce stellar wind is driving the material away, downwards in this image. The eye of the elephant is a cavity in the globule and this has been emptied by the stellar winds from two young stars, of a few million years, which are in the cavity. Other very young stars, less than 100 00 years old, have also been detected at infra-red wavelengths.