The Flaming Star Nebula and Tadpoles

The Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405) is a stunning emission and reflection nebula in the constellation Auriga, about 1,500 light-years from Earth. It is a mix of glowing hydrogen gas (emission) and dust that reflects the light of nearby stars (reflection), creating a beautiful, fiery appearance. What I find suprising is the nebulosity which appears to connect the Flame nebula with the Tadpole Nebula (IC 410) which is an H II region, however this is infact located 12,400 light-years away.

Gear & Imaging Details:

For this session, I used the Samyang 135mm f/2 lens paired with the ZWO ASI071 MC Pro camera, a great combination for wide-field astrophotography. To enhance contrast and isolate emission nebulae, I opted for the Optolong L-Enhance filter, which helps cut through light pollution and suppress background glow, it is a triband filter.

The total integration time was 6 hours, with individual 300-second subs to bring out the intricate details of IC 405’s glowing hydrogen and oxygen regions. The session took place under a 48% moon phase, which introduced some sky glow but was well managed by the narrowband filtering. In the processing, the filter caused the stars to have a blue tone which could be handled by creating a star mask which was processed seperatley from the nebulosity.

In Pixinsight, Graxpert gradient reduction was used, along with Blur Xterminator, Noise Xterminator and Star Xterminator the go to suite of tools for astrophotographers.

Equipment