IC 1369: Elephant's Trunk Nebula

IC 1396, also known as Elephant's Trunk Nebula, is my very favorite nebula of all time: it shows some wonderfully contrasting details, and its rise at night means that spring and summer are around the corner.
The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is located in the Cepheus constellation and spans circularly with a diameter of over two degrees, that's the reason why I had to make a mosaic made up of two different images merged in a single squared frame.
In the middle section lies the actual "trunk" cataloged as vdB 142 (visible in greater detail in the first image crop) that with its shape gives the name to this nebular region full of dust lumps (scientifically known as Bok globules, visible in the second image crop).