IC 405 (also known as the Flaming Star Nebula, SH 2-229, or Caldwell 31) is an emission and reflection nebula[1] in the constellation Auriga, surrounding the bluish star AE Aurigae. It shines at magnitude +6.0. Its celestial coordinates are RA 05h 16.2m dec +34° 28′. It surrounds the irregular variable star AE Aurigae and is located near the emission nebula IC 410, the open clusters M38 and M36, and the K-class star Iota Aurigae. The nebula measures approximately 37.0′ x 19.0′, and lies about 1,500 light-years away from Earth. It is believed that the proper motion of the central star can be traced back to the Orion’s Belt area. The nebula is about 5 light-years across.
Image:
Equipment/Software:
- Astro-Modded Nikon D90
- Sigma APO 300mm F2.8
- Sky-watcher Star Adventurer
- Star Adventurer Tripod
- Intervalometer
- Bahintov mask
- Laptop
- Sharpcap
- Photoshop
- Pixinsight
- Stellarium
- All Sky Plate Solver
Acquisition:
- ISO 800, F3.2
- 80 x 2 minute subs for the lower part of the image
- 94 x 2 minute subs for the upper part
- (this was an accidental mosaic, but I think it turned out well!)
- 200 flats
- 200 Bias
- 15 temp-matched darks
Processing:
- Stacked manually in Pixinsight
- DBE on each panel
- Star alignment in mosaic mode
- Gradient Merge Mosaic
- Color Calibration
- Deconvolution
- John Rista Noise reduction
- Saved image
- Histogram Strech
- Starnet
- Fixed star holes in photoshop
- MANY curves transformations to get the color that I want
- Opened unstreched image, lightly streched
- Starnet to create star mask
- SNCR and increased saturation on star mask
- Added star mask and starless image
Annotated Image:
