NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey  Explorer, or WISE, captured this image of a star-forming cloud of dust  and gas, called Sh2-284, located in the constellation of Monoceros.  Lining up along the edges of a cosmic hole are several "elephant trunks"  -- or monstrous pillars of dense gas and dust.

The most famous examples of elephant  trunks are the "Pillars of Creation" found in an iconic image of the  Eagle nebula from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In this WISE image, the  trunks are seen as small columns of gas stretching toward the center of  the void in Sh2-284, The most notable one can be seen on the right side  at about the 3 o'clock position. It appears as a closed hand with a  finger pointing toward the center of the void. That elephant trunk is  about 7 light-years long.

Deep inside Sh2-284 resides an open  star cluster, called Dolidze 25, which is emitting vast amounts of  radiation in all directions, along with stellar winds. These stellar  winds and radiation are clearing out a cavern inside the surrounding gas  and dust, creating the void seen in the center. The bright green wall  surrounding the cavern shows how far out the gas has been eroded.  However, some sections of the original gas cloud were much denser than  others, and they were able to resist the erosive power of the radiation  and stellar winds. These pockets of dense gas remained and protected the  gas "downwind" from them, leaving behind the elephant trunks.

Sh2-284 is relatively isolated at the  very end of an outer spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. In the night  sky, it's located in the opposite direction from the center of the Milky  Way.

See the website for more details.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20110304.html