It probably seems by my posts that all nebulae are stellar nurseries. This week I captured one that is not a stellar nursery but a very unique nebula.
Description
IC 405 is visible only because of a chance meeting with a star, AE Aurigae. AE Aurigae is a large, hot O-type star 1,300 to 1,500 light hears away from us and is moving through space at 100 km/sec. It is the bright star center, lower left in the image above. It is known as a “Runaway Star,” due to its rapid speed through space. To find its origin, we trace its path backwards and it intersects with the Orion Nebula. Thus it is believed that AE Aurigae was ejected from the Orion Nebula due to a dynamical interaction with another star.
There are two other stars, Mu Columbae and 53 Arietis. which share similar motions and are thought to be part of the same dynamic interaction as AE Aurigae.
Currently, AE Aurigae is passing through a volume of space that holds hydrogen gas and dust clouds. These dust clouds are reflecting blue light from AE Aurigae, while the UV radiation from AE Aurigae is ionizing the hydrogen gas and making it give off its characteristic red light. In a few million years AE Aurigae will pass beyond these clouds of dust and hydrogen and they will disappear from our night sky.
Capture Details
The image was captured with an 80mm SV550 triplet refractor, a QHYCCD miniCam8 with RGB and Ha filters. A total of 16 hours of integration time was used to capture the image. The Ha images were blended into the red channel as well as used as the luminance channel.
The full resolution of this image is available on my AstroBin gallery.
Astro-Shed 
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