Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Auriga (Aur)  ·  Contains:  AE Aur  ·  Flaming Star Nebula  ·  IC 405  ·  Sh2-229
IC 405 - The Flaming Star Nebula, Cosgrove's Cosmos (Patrick Cosgrove)
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IC 405 - The Flaming Star Nebula

IC 405 - The Flaming Star Nebula, Cosgrove's Cosmos (Patrick Cosgrove)
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IC 405 - The Flaming Star Nebula

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Description

IC 405 - The Flaming Star Nebula, also known as Caldwell 31, is a nebulae in the constellation Auriga surrounding the bright blue irregular variable star AE Aurigae. This nebulae is located about 1500 light years away and is about 5 light years across. The red portions of the nebula is from emission nebulae, while the bluer portions are reflection nebulae, reflecting the light of AE Aurigae.

I shot this over the nights of 11-08 & 11-09 and ended up with 136 subs of 2.5 minutes exposure. So I was hoping for an integration time of 5.5 hours. If you saw my Cave Nebula image, you read about the problem I encountered on the second night of shooting - where thin cirrus clouds were reflecting light pollution located to my north. I had the same problem with this image, but it was not as severe. I ended up having to lose about 34 subs because they were much worse than the others. This gave me a total useful integration time of about 4.25 hours. Fortunately I did not lose as many frames on this one and the noise was more easily handled.

Here are the image details:

102 x 150 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C. ( I was hoping for 150!)

45 Bias exposures

25 Dark exposures

45 Flats

Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO

Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm

Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini

Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2

Field Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon

Mount: Ioptron CEM60

Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras

Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller

Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop, Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, and much swearing…..

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IC 405 - The Flaming Star Nebula, Cosgrove's Cosmos (Patrick Cosgrove)