Presenting the Flaming Star Nebula...or also known by the more boring catalog number IC405.

This mess isn't really vomit. If it was, it'd be a big hurl, at 5 light years wide. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, the cloud is indeed the product of a star spewing forth.

The nebula is pretty close to us, in our own Milky Way galaxy. It lies in an adjacent spiral arm about 1500 light years away. Flaming isn't very old. The star that exploded, creating this display, did so recently. This is why the nebula seems to have such fine detail; it hasn't yet grown diffuse from endless expansion.

That new huge blue star is called AE Aurigae. It's young and hot and was no doubt created in the aftermath of the supernova explosion that formed the larger nebulonic cloud. It is almost single-handedly lighting up the entire region. The star's radiation causes nearby gasses like hydrogen to ionize and glow red...though some of it looks a little purplish from the mix of intense blue starlight.

The blue stuff is just ash and dust. Normally gray or even a little brown, it reflects the star's blue light just like colored sparks light up the smoke from fireworks.

The Flaming Star Nebula was discovered by American astronomer John Martin Schaeberle in 1892. About the same time, German astronomer Max Wolf described what he saw as a “burning body from which several enormous curved flames seem to break out like gigantic prominences.”

Well, what he really said was, "Ein brennender Körper, aus dem mehrere enorme, gebogene Flammen wie gigantische Vorsprünge auszubrechen scheinen." But I digress...

AE Aurigae is an exceptionally massive and luminous star. It's much bigger than our sun and really, really hot. Unfortunately, though it is only a few million years old, AE Aurigae will not last long. This kind of star lives life in the fast lane. It will burn through its supply of hydrogen fuel like a kid eating candy and blow out as yet another supernovae in less than 10 million years.

Tonight's tale was spun to the Manu Katché jazz tune 𝘍𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘚𝘶𝘯.