Thursday, Sep 4, 2025

Here we are in the constellation of Auriga (a little ahead of schedule "it's a late autumn/winter constellation" in fact I photographed it for about a couple of hours at a time) IC 405 (also known as C 31) is a diffuse nebula about 1630 light-years away. In its direction we can observe a blue star of the fifth magnitude, known as AE Aurigae, an enigmatic variable star, it is thought to be one of the so-called "runaway" stars, because they were born in the region of the Orion Nebula about 2.7 million years ago and from there they "escaped", dispersing into the Milky Way. IC 410, sometimes known as the Tadpole Nebula because of its filaments. The nebulous system of IC 410 has been analyzed in several studies due to its structure, which represents a good example of a star-forming region of high-mass stars. It is about 10,400 light-years away. IC 417, also known as the Spider Nebula, is a large emission nebula, about 7,500 light-years away. Visible on the left is Sh2-232, also known as the Pumpkin Nebula, about 5,870 light-years away. Above, Messier 38, discovered by Giovanni Battista Odierna before 1654 and then independently discovered by Guillaume Le Gentil in 1749, is about 4,200 light-years away. Its age is estimated at 220 million years. Further down, Messier 36 is an open cluster, 4,100 light-years away.