Target: Flaming Star Nebula (IC405)
Date: February 22, 2026 - February, 24, 2026
Location: My Backyard in Georgetown, Texas
Sky Conditions: Clear to fair skies, 35°F, Wind: 10-20 MPH, Moon: 33% illuminated.
Bortle Class: 5
Integration: 463 x 60 seconds
We had some generally clear but windy nights this week, and I wanted to capture a few last winter nebulae shots before we transition to galaxies for the next couple of months. So, I targeted the Flaming Star Nebula. I took this over two nights because I can only get about a four-hour window each night due to trees. At this point, the moon has become too much of a factor, so I guess this is all I’ll get of the Flaming Star Nebula this year.
I love this target because of its story. The nebula itself is an emission and reflection nebula surrounding the star AE Aurigae. However, this star was not born there, but is rather only passing through. AE Aurigae is a runaway star from thought to have originated in the nearby Trapezium of the Orion Nebula. Who knows where this star will travel in its lifetime before burning up all of its fuel.
Full resolution: https://app.astrobin.com/u/justin_the_dark?i=wkdcxh
The Flaming Star Nebula - IC 405 (also known as the Flaming Star Nebula, SH 2-229, or Caldwell 31) is an emission and reflection nebula in the constellation Auriga north of the celestial equator, surrounding the bluish, irregular variable star AE Aurigae.
AE Aurigae is a blue O-type main sequence star with a mean apparent magnitude of +6.0. It is a runaway star that might have been ejected during a collision of two binary star groups. This collision, which also is credited with ejecting Mu Columbae and possibly 53 Arietis, has been traced to the Trapezium cluster in the Orion Nebula two million years ago.
AE Aur is seen to light up the Flaming Star nebula, but it was not formed within it. Instead it is passing through the nebula at high speed and producing a violent bow shock and high energy electromagnetic radiation.
Source:
Post-Processing Workflow
Software Used: PixInsight
Stacked in PixInsight with WBPP.
Dynamic Cropped Image.
Applied Seti Astro's AutoDBE.
Applied BlurXTerminator at .25 Stellar and .45 Non-Stellar.
Unscreened and removed stars with StarXTerminator.
Applied NoiseXTerminator at 70% on starless image.
Extracted Ha and OIII channels with DBXtract.
Used Seti Astro’s Statistical Stretch to stretch extracted images.
Combined Ha & OIII with Foray Palette Utility.
Applied SHO palette with Narrowband Normalization.
Created Blue and Yellow masks.
Adjusted different regions of starless image with curves adjustment tool.
Adjusted final luminance levels with curves adjustment tool.
Used Seti Astro's star stretch script to stretch star image at 6.20 with color boost at 1.50 and SCNR checked.
Combined starless with star images with image blend script.
Exported as PNG.
