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Rippling dust and gas lanes give the
Flaming Star Nebula its name. The red and blue
colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by
different processes. The bright star
AE Aurigae is so hot it is blue, emitting light so energetic it
knocks
electrons away from surrounding gas. When a
proton
recaptures an electron,
red light is frequently emitted. The blue
region's color is a mix of this red light and blue light emitted by AE
Aurigae but reflected to us by surrounding
dust. The two regions are referred to as
emission nebula and
reflection nebula, respectively. The Flaming
Star Nebula, officially known as IC 405, lies about 1500
light years distant, spans about 5 light years, and is visible with
a small telescope toward the constellation of
Auriga.
This image is a composite from black and white images taken with the Palomar Observatory's 48-inch (1.2-meter) Samuel Oschin Telescope as a part of the second National Geographic Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS II). The images were recorded on two type of glass photographic plates - one sensitive to red light and the other to blue and later they were digitized. Credit: Caltech, Palomar Observatory, Digitized Sky Survey. In order to produce the color image seen
here, I worked with a total of 56 different
frames, 28 for each color band, coming from
4 different plates taken
between 1988 and 1996.
Original file is 11,144x9,801 pixels with a resolution of about 1 arcsec per pixel. The image show an area of sky large
3.1° x 2.7° (for
comparison, the full-Moon is about 0.5° in diameter). Other images of the same celestial field found online
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