Target Comments IC 405, the "Flaming Star Nebula", is a combination emission/reflection nebula surrounding the 6th magnitude star AE Aurigae. The nebula gets its name from the ruddy clouds of luminous hydrogen gas that envelop the star. This image was filtered to capture only the light of doubly ionized hydrogen, which is set aglow by the energy of the central star -- a star so hot that it appears blue-white in color photos.

Image Comments This was a first-light image with all new equipment, including a Takahashi EM-200 mount to carry the Takahashi refractor, an ST-10XE CCD camera from SBIG, and an Astrodon H-Alpha filter to replace the Schuler I used previously. The results are a significant improvement over my previous images, largely because of the solid guiding possible with the EM-200, but also due to the enhanced red sensitivity of the new camera. I used a few new processing techniques as well, smoothing the dim areas in the lower left slightly and superimposing a high-pass filtered layer on the bright areas to enhance fine detail. Don Goldman demonstrated the latter trick on November 6th at the Advanced Imaging Conference in San Jose, California, which was an excellent event.