The Flaming Star Nebula is located above Orion in the constellation Auriga. It has been cataloged as Caldwell 31 and IC 405.
The nebula gets its name from the rippled appearance of dust and gas lanes that surround AE Aurigae, the star that provides the illumination of the “flame”. The nebula spans 5 light years and is located 1,500 light years from Earth.
When I reviewed the 24 images used to produce the final image I noticed I had captured a satellite flare. The most likely candidate was Orbcomm FM10 which belongs to a family of satellites that provide tracking, monitoring and messaging capabilities for users around the globe.
While that flare may have ruined a single image (or added some pizazz depending on how you look at it), when stacking multiple images a flare like this gets filtered out as “noise” and does not make it into the final image.
Date of capture: 22 February 2021
Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 APO Triplet Refractor with a Televue TRF-2008 reducer/flattener
Focal length: 384mm
Mount: Orion Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC Pro
Filter: Optolong L-Extreme
Exposure: 2 hours (300 seconds x 24)
Capture software: Astro Photography Tool
Processing software: DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop (plugins: ProDigital Software Astronomy Tools, Topaz DeNoise AI)