Gold Canyon, Arizona
December 5 - 17, 2020

Another Salvage Operation: Reprocessing in 2023

I imaged the Flaming Star Nebula with narrowband filters in Gold Canyon, AZ, in 2020.  When I first processed the data, the results were awful.  Since the Oxygen-III filter exposures showed almost no details, I kept only 8 subframes.  Unlike many emission nebulae, the Sulfur-II filter contained exquisite detail with many fine features not found in the Hydrogen-alpha filter images.  I also made the mistake of not imaging with RGB filters, so the flaming star reflection feature is absent in the narrowband false color SHO Hubble palette image.  In 2023, I reprocessed the data using my current workflow that employs Russ Croman’s XTerminator tool suite and new scripts and tools in PixInsight.

Description:

IC 405, the Flaming Star nebula, is a large emission nebula with a prominent reflection region around the brightest star, the bluish, irregular variable star AE Aurigae, that looks like smoke and gives the object its name.  However, it is also a very interesting emission region bright in both the Hydrogen-alpha and Sulfur-II bands.  The nebula is about 5 light years across and is 1500 ly from Earth (Wikipedia).

Imaging details:

Telescope:    Celestron 9.25" Edge HD SCT
Mount:        Celestron CGEM II mount
Imaging Camera:    ZWO ASI 1600MM Pro cooled monochrome camera (-10C)
Filters:        36mm ZWO Hydrogen-alpha, Oxygen-III and Sulfur-II filters
Accessory:    Celestron 0.7x focal reducer
Guiding:        Celestron off-axis guider with ZWO ASI174MM mini guide camera

Software:    Sequence Generator Pro, PHD2 guiding, Celestron CPWI mount control,
    PixInsight and Photoshop CC 2023

Exposures:

Hydrogen-alpha    10 min x 36 subframes (360 min), Gain 139, Offset 21, 1x1 binning
Oxygen-III              10 min x 8 subframes (80 min), Gain 139, Offset 21, 1x1 binning
Sulfur-II                  10 min x 35 subframes (350 min), Gain 139, Offset 21, 1x1 binning

Total integration time: 13.2 hours