The Heart of the Flaming Star (Connor Matherne)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Auriga (Aur) · Contains: Flaming Star nebula · IC 405

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The Heart of the Flaming Star

Link: https://matherneconnor.wixsite.com/astronomy

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The Heart of the Flaming Star

Link: https://matherneconnor.wixsite.com/astronomy

Still trying to learn the ropes of processing the 14.5" data. Far different from processing any other data sets I have ever worked with. I am rather happy with this one though. I worked rather hard to preserve the reflection nebula color. This was obtained by using the arcsinh stretching function to ensure I didn't get any shifts in color while stretching. There were also some Ha frames taken, but I decided not to include them since they didn't bring any new data to the table and only helped remove that beautiful blue reflection.

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Is star AE Aurigae on fire? No. Even though AE Aurigae is named the flaming star, the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula, and the region appears to have the color of fire, there is no fire. Fire, typically defined as the rapid molecular acquisition of oxygen, happens only when sufficient oxygen is present and is not important in such high-energy, low-oxygen environments such as stars. The material that appears as smoke is mostly interstellar hydrogen, but does contain smoke-like dark filaments of carbon-rich dust grains. The bright star AE Aurigae, visible toward the right near the nebula's center, is so hot it is blue, emitting light so energetic it knocks electrons away from surrounding gas. When a proton recaptures an electron, light is emitted, as seen in the surrounding emission nebula. Pictured above, the Flaming Star nebula lies about 1,500 light years distant, spans about 5 light years, and is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga).

Source: ADOD

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1914507
PixInsight job	BLZ9HP0ODNNJNQANGIJ2FW3HSVBS9NJE
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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The Heart of the Flaming Star

The Heart of the Flaming Star

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Image Index:

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The Heart of the Flaming Star

The Heart of the Flaming Star

Equipment

Acquisition details

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