Astrophotography Post: The Flaming Star Nebula

The “Flaming Star” Nebula, IC 405

This is The Flaming Star Nebula which has a rather unique look since it's both an Emission and Reflection nebula, and it has an interesting backstory to boot!

The 'engine' for this nebula is the bright star you see associated with the jagged white "smoke" trail: AE Aurigae. This star puts out about 30,000 times as much light as the Sun making it a member of the most luminous star classifications: O and B. It is also unusually bright compared to other stars in its class.

The extreme amount of energy streaming from this star is exciting the gas and dust that it happens to be traveling through (more on that in the next pic) causing the loose hydrogen here to emit a red glow and reflecting off the white dust in front of it giving the impression of 'smoke' coming from the star, hence the name "Flaming Star".

The star is relatively close to us at 1500 light-years (the galaxy itself is 100,000 light-years in diameter) so it's fairly easy to tell if it's sitting still or moving through the galaxy on its own, which it is, and at a fairly high rate of speed too!

In fact, it's moving quickly enough that some of the modern all-sky star position surveys can see its movement across the sky in only 6 months’ time, and after many observations they can trace the path of this star back to its original position all the way over in the Orion Nebula (also 1500 light years away from us) from where it was gravitationally 'ejected' about 2 million years ago along with another star that we've found that's headed the opposite direction.

At first, I thought this was pretty far-fetched but the more I thought about it the more I realized how much gravitational energy something with 17 times the mass of the Sun would actually have if it got close to something, like that other star!

I also found out that this large proper motion through the sky isn't really all that uncommon for these super-bright, heavy stars with approximately 15% of them being on some kind of 'journey' in the Milky Way. The star cluster "The Pleiades" is an example of a whole cluster of 1000 or so super bright, young stars zipping past us in our corner of the galaxy, kinda like teenagers with fast cars in the neighborhood!

Having the white 'smoke trail' reflection nebula superimposed on the emission nebula in the background isn't something I've run across anywhere else, not that my survey is by any means 'thorough', but among the stuff we amateurs take pics of, this one is unique.

I love the dark shadowy folds, little dark details, and all the loopy wispy stuff to the left side of the nebula.

When I shot the Flaming Star the first time I didn't even know all that wispy stuff across the top was even up there! So when I shot it this time I made sure I got it framed right.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Technical Details:

This image was shot in monochrome with a QHY600M camera.
It was shot thru various filters in 5 layers: Red, Green, Blue, Luminance, and Hydrogen / Oxygen-III
Telescope was an AstroTech 152EDT refractor (6-inch) with the entire focuser assembly replaced with a Moonlike 2.5” Crayford focuser with their matching focus motor.

Exposure times
Red: 1 hr, 30 min
Green: 1 hr, 6 min:
Blue: 1 hr, 21 min
Luminance: 1 hr
Ha/O-III: 2 hrs, 44 min
Total Integration Time: 7 hours, 41 minutes