IC405 - Deep Into the Flames (John Dziuba)

IC405 - Deep Into the Flames

The Flaming Star Nebula (IC405) is an emission and reflection nebula that is roughly 1,500 light years from Earth and is roughly five light years across. It is located in the constellation Auriga. The area is illuminated by an interesting star, AE Aurigae, which is actually a runaway star from the Orion complex. It is thought that about two million years ago it was part of a binary star system that was in a collision with another binary system and the resulting chaos caused this star to be ejected from its original neighborhood! The star is currently lighting up the Flaming Star nebula, but it was not formed within it. Instead it is passing through the nebula at high speed and producing a violent bow shock and high energy electromagnetic radiation which is ionizing and illuminating the surrounding gasses in shades of red. The blue light is primarily light from the super hot AE Aurigae reflected off the surrounding local molecular material.

Have a look at Revision "G" which is a starless version, except for the "star" of the show AE Aurigae.

The Flaming Star nebula is one of those targets that is easy to image because it is large and bright, but one that is hard to image well. While I always aim to create top quality images, this time I set out to create a really special image that stands out from most. My C11 scope is well tuned and I had a run of clear nights with good seeing that kept my FWHM below 2.3 on all frames. I decided that I would not settle for less than 24 hours of integration time. I used all of my PixInsight skills and the some to perfect the result.

Resolving the blue color is the hardest part of this project. To do this, I collected a large amount of O3 data. Then I boosted that signal with data from the blue frames that I collected for the star colors. I am pretty pleased with the result! I hope you agree.

Original
G
Final
H

G

Title: Starless Version - AE Aurigae only

Description: This is a starless version, other than the "star" of the show AE Aurigae which is the star responsible for illuminating this nebula. See my full writeup for more details.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6820723
PixInsight job	4WAF39QICA4I8SQ6F9DBJYMJ2A0VOL9B
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h16m21s.574
RA (top/left)	05h16m08s.620
RA (top/right)	05h18m35s.543
RA (bottom/right)	05h16m34s.849
RA (bottom/left)	05h14m07s.756

Dec (center)	+34°29′16″.99
Dec (top/left)	+33°59′21″.17
Dec (top/right)	+34°17′26″.22
Dec (bottom/right)	+34°59′04″.95
Dec (bottom/left)	+34°40′52″.14

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