The Flaming Star Nebula is created by a runaway star (AE Aurigae), originally ejected from the Orion region millions of years ago, ionizing hydrogen gas that lies in the vast clouds of gas and dust that make up this nebula. The nebula is about 5-LY across and is approximately 1500 LY away in the constellation of Auriga. If you are interested in learning more about the Flaming Star, Rosewell Astronomy made a very good video on it, "Learning about IC 405 and capturing a Flame" (https://youtu.be/PTksS2_DZFc).

This was not the image I was planning on rather a HaRGB, however, only having clear nights on moon-filled nights prevented that version or postponed it. Were due for some clear weather tomorrow so that more popular truer to natural color version may be coming soon. In this version AE Aurigae is the blueish star in the center of the image and ironically is close to the natural color - stars in narrowband images are typically not the true color.

I was preparing to do this as an HaRGB or possibly an HOO if moonless clear nights were scarce, however, John Hayes posted a version on Astrobin (https://www.astrobin.com/f00xnv/C/?nc=all) a few weeks ago and mentioned that there was hardly any OIII in this nebula so I decided not to waste my time on that - thanks John. In my version I went with Ha in the red channel, 50% Ha and 50% SII in the green channel, and SII in the blue channel. I did several other combinations but this looked most interesting with the most detail. I did a couple of rounds of star reduction in PI even before combining it with the Ha since the stars in the SII image were more apparent.

Lastly, I seem to have gremlins pop up when I stack SII data these days. This is the second time it happened. Long and short is I had to stack the SII in )DSS. If you interested I made a blog post of what the problem is and I show examples of what I am getting. (http://astroquest1.blogspot.com/2020/01/stacking-issue-with-sii-sulfur-data.html).

Real Imaging Dates:

1-2-20, 1-6-20, 1-12-20, 1-15-20, 1-16-20