Starry nights to you!
IC 405 (also known as the Flaming Star Nebula, SH 2-229, or Caldwell 31) is an emission and reflection nebula in the constellation Auriga. It is generally not visible to the naked eye. Auriga is near the winter Milky Way so there are a lot of stars in and around the nebula.
Flaming Star Nebula
The nebula is the reddish thing in the background. Red is made by ionized hydrogen. Hydrogen is a prominent element in the universe.
North (toward Polaris) is up in the photo. The picture was taken with a fully modified Canon Rebel camera (this is my one shot color camera) on a TEC 140 telescope in the Alpenglow-Torrey House Observatory in the dark sky community of Torrey, Utah (Bortle 2-3).
Six 210-second sub-frames were used and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker = 21 minute photo. Unguided, unbinned, no darks or flats. Processed in Photoshop (CS5).
Location in the night sky of the photo:
Source: Astrometry.net
thanks again, Mark. I owe you for almost everything I know about stars and galaxies