The Flaming Star in Ha

May 26, 2022

The Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405, SH 2-229, Caldwell 31) is a massive emission nebula and reflection nebula, 1500 lightyears away in the constellation Auriga. IC 405 is about 5 lightyears across, so that's roughly 30 trillion miles (47 trillion kilometers) of dense clouds of ionized hydrogen. With the stars in the field of view removed (or just de-emphasized) you can really see the motion in the clouds of hydrogen and interstellar dust. It is the intense radiation and stellar winds from energetic stars (especially AE Aurigae, a rather large blue O-type main sequence star) that drive these clouds through space, but that motion and the complexity of the cloud structures is not as easy to see with all the stars in the way. Imaging Notes: 60 x 240sec subs stacked in DSS. William Optics GT81 Apo refractor, 6nm Astronomik Ha filter, ZWO ASI 1600MM-Pro monochrome camera. Star removal: StarNet++

Here's the same image with the stars de-emphasized. I think the thing to keep in mind is that most of these stars are between us and IC 405, not in the same field and distance. With most astronomy/planetarium apps you can configure magnitude of stars, but I don't think any have the ability to show stars and other objects by distance, or a range of distances. I think that would be interesting, and it would give astrophotographers a way to remove all stars except those in the same region with similar distance to the object being presented.