Flaming Star Nebula - Blog Posts
Ok, so I finished the processing of my new photo of the Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405)
Image taken in SII and Ha with a few RGB images to have the correct star colours. This is technically an SHH combination image but with a narrowband normalisation and a lot of curve modifications (with and without colour masks) to get colours/contrast that I liked. I already had taken a photo of this nebula, but it was using mostly RGB data with a bit of Ha (and a lot less integration time). It did show the dust reflection way better, but I like the contrast we can see inside the nebula's gas on this one. Thanks to @shaythempronouns for suggesting the use of an SII filter to image this nebula. Starless version :
(Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera ZWO LRGB filters and Baader 6.5nm narrowband filter. 5x120s image for each colour filter (RGB), 29x300s for the Ha filter and 33x300s for the SII filter, total imaging time 6h 35min, stacking and processing done in PixInsight. Photo taken mid-January)
Image of IC 405 aka the Flaming Star Nebula This is an emission (the red part) and reflection (the blue part) nebula. It's relatively bright for a nebula with visual magnitude of +6.
The bright star at the center of the blue reflection nebula is AE Aurigae, it's the star responsible for the ionisation of the gas in this nebula. AE Aurigae is what's known as a runaway star, those are star that moves at high speed compared to their surrounding environment. They are the result of gravitational interaction between stars or stars being ejected by nearby supernovae. In the case of AE Aurigae, it was probably ejected due to gravitational interaction, its path has been traced back to the Orion Nebula from which it was ejected about 2 million years ago.
The moon was nearly full and somewhat close by when I took the photos, so it was a bit tricky to process them. As a result, the reflection part of the nebula was not as visible as I would have liked but I think the overall result is not too bad.
Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera. 6x300s image for each colour filter (LRGB) and 12x300s for the Ha filter, total imaging time 3h, stacking and processing done in PixInsight.
Tried applying the Ortonglow script in PixInsight to give the nebula a bit more depth, but I don't like the halos it gave around the bright stars on the left.
