Flaming Star Nebula IC405 and AE Aurigae, the fugitive star (Mau_Bard)

Flaming Star Nebula IC405 and AE Aurigae, the fugitive star

This is one year old data recorded during the three nights of 5 November 2021, 1 and 6 January 2022 in HOO.

IC405 and runaway star AE Aurigae

IC 405 (also known as Sh2-229 and Caldwell 31) is a diffuse nebula visible in the constellation Auriga.

It is a nebula that is elusive to direct observation, but very evident in long-exposure photos, located 500 parsecs (1630 light years) away; in its direction we observe a blue star of fifth magnitude, known as AE Aurigae (the big star above-right the center of the image), a variable and enigmatic star: it would be a runaway star, born in the region of the Orion Nebula about 2.6 million years ago ago and from there expelled, together with other stars as μ Columbae. IC 405 shines due to the radiation received from AE Aurigae, which ionizes its gases and gives it a red colour; the blue spots are instead due to the reflection of the blue light of the star on the dark dust. AE Aurigae creates a bow shock within IC405, visible in infrared.

Through the data obtained with the Hipparcos satellite it emerged that about 2.6 million years ago AE Aurigae, μ Columbae and the brilliant binary ι Orionis were in the same position in space; it was thus hypothesized that these stars underwent a four-body interaction, in which two binaries in the Orion OB1 association exchanged; the result was that the two more massive stars underwent reciprocal gravitational influences becoming a new binary system, the current ι Orionis, while the two less massive stars were pushed away at great speed by the intense gravitational energy, moving away from the region of their formation and becoming runaway stars.

IC 405 appears to be optically connected with the neighbor IC 410, that in reality is a much more distant object placed at 3000-6000 parsec.
(From Italian Wikipedia and galaxymap.org).

Final
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B

B

Title: Starless

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6841338
PixInsight job	Q9MOA6XW6BBU6MXRR3ND0OZD6IEARLKY
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h15m59s.100
RA (top/left)	05h12m47s.135
RA (top/right)	05h19m11s.629
RA (bottom/right)	05h19m13s.217
RA (bottom/left)	05h12m44s.444

Dec (center)	+34°30′38″.76
Dec (top/left)	+34°03′52″.96
Dec (top/right)	+34°04′07″.36
Dec (bottom/right)	+34°56′59″.99
Dec (bottom/left)	+34°56′50″.84

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