Located in the constellation Auriga, the Flaming Star Nebula is a rare "hybrid" nebula, featuring both deep red emission gas and delicate blue reflection dust. The nebula gets its name from the intricate, smoke-like filaments of hydrogen that appear to be "on fire," all powered by the intense energy of a single, extraordinary star.
Scroll for information about the object, and how I processed the data
The Flaming Star Nebula
Fun Facts
- The central star, AE Aurigae, wasn't born here. It's a "runaway" star traveling at incredible speeds after being kicked out of the Orion Nebula millions of years ago.
- Because the star is moving so fast, it is only passing through this cloud; in a few thousand years, it will move on and the "flames" will simply go out.
- The glowing structures are massive in scale, roughly 5 light-years across. About 30 trillion miles of gas and dust.
- The "Flaming Star" itself is an O-type main-sequence star, making it significantly hotter, larger, and bluer than our own Sun.
Processing Notes
Back in the garden, but the light pollution filter did it's job. A really clear night, so I managed to get 4 hours of data before the nebula passed down below the fence line. Processing this image was tricky due to lots of colour noise, but I used colour masks for the first time to bring out the red and suppress some of the noise and darken the background.