The Flaming Star Burns Brighter in Hydrogen-α; Straton is fun!

For some reason the name "Flaming Star Nebula" has always been attractive to me, and the object itself is beautiful: it's a combination of a lot of hydrogen emission with some delicate blue reflection, in some ways a lot like the Orion Nebula. I suspected it would look good in Hα so when it moved high enough in my sky I turned my telescope in its direction. I had intermittent high clouds. My chiller was broken so I didn't cool the camera, but the night was cool enough. I had trouble plate solving (it's a lot harder in Hα due to fewer stars), but found β Tau OK and used the PicGoto from there. #!%!!??! Windows did an automatic update on me and killed the session early, but the mount was about to bump and it also looked like the clouds were coming back about then anyway. I've disabled the automatic update "feature" now, I hope. Regardless, the Flaming Star looks very nice in Hα. Here is the Hα image; a lot of emission and detail is visible. This is an animated GIF alternating between grayscale and false color.

Date: 6 Nov 2014

Subject: IC 405, Flaming Star Nebula

Scope: AT8IN + Antares 0.5x Telereducer

Filter: Baader Planetarium 7 nm Hα

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.3.1k (Win 7 ASCOM)

Camera: DSI IIc no chiller 5-10 °C

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.1, no dither

Exposure: 23x600 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, 35 flats, OSC extract R, normalize, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.289 Crop; Develop 75.00%; HDR:Optimize; Life:Less=More; Deconvolute: 5.0 pix; Track 5.3 pix; Magic 1 pix. Photoshop CC 2014 + Carboni Astronomy Tools Deep space noise reduction; Hα false color dark space; Astroframe; assemble animated GIF.

After seeing the Hα, I realized I really needed the blue reflection as well, so I waited for the Moon to move away and captured a long one-shot color data set. The night was very cold and clear. I synched from β Tau and easily acquired the target with the PicGoto; I used the markers in Nebulosity to align the shot to match my previous Hα image for later combining. The CCD ran from about 2.5 to -5.5 °C with no chiller (it's still broken). The tiniest bit of wind gave no guiding issues. I threw out about the first hour's worth of subs due to poor focus. I imaged up to the meridian, then did a meridian flip and took in a few Leonid meteors (I saw a bright one streak right across Orion, leaving a trail). I used Astrotortilla to resynch, reacquired with the PicGoto, realigned, and continued imaging until dawn. I think the image turned out really nice; you really do need to see the blue to get the full "flame" effect. Here it is:

Date: 17 Nov 2014

Subject: IC 405, Flaming Star Nebula

Scope: AT8IN + Antares 0.5x Telereducer

Filter: Baader Planetarium Fringe Killer

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.3.1l (Win 7 ASCOM)

Camera: DSI IIc no chiller 2.5 to -5.5 °C

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.1, no dither

Exposure: 78x300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, 35 flats, normalize, deBayer & square, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.289 Crop; Wipe: Aggressiveness 85%, Corner aggressiveness 163%, Drop off point 85%; Develop 82.53%; HDR:Optimize; Color:Scientific, 235%;  Life:Moderate; Deconvolute: 1.8 pix; Track 5.3 pix; Magic 1 pix. Photoshop CC 2014 + Carboni Astronomy Tools healing brush; Increase star color; Levels; Astroframe.

I did these two images with the intent of combining them to make an HαRRGB image, but my first few attempts using my previous methods were unsatisfactory, usually because using the Hα for the red channel or for luminance always left the stars looking blue. The red channel in the RGB is quite bright. So I set this aside for a day or two, then I ran across some references to Straton, a piece of Windows software that does beautiful automatic star removal, image subtraction, and similar things. At 15 euros, it falls within the realm of "inexpensive" (notice I did not say "cheap"); this works out to about $20 at current exchange rates. I played with the free trial and then bought Straton; it works fine under Windows 7/VMWare on my Macbook. Straton allowed me to remove the stars from the Hα image, and to make a "stars only" version I could use as a layer mask in Photoshop. I combined Hα without stars plus about 50% of the stars added back in, with the R channel from the RGB, and I used the same combination for luminance but layered the original RGB on top of that with a "hide all" layer mask allowing only the stars to show to preserve the original star color. I like this result, but I’m still learning so I might learn to do better. Here it is:

This shows a lot more detail in the emission. The stars still look a bit blue, but not too bad. Straton was definitely worth my $20, and I plan to play with it some more.