02/01/2025 – LBN 777 – The Baby Eagle Nebula TOTM

The forecast was calling for a clear sky for most of the night so I set things up to capture the SkywatcherUSA TOTM for February 2025, LBN 777 the Baby Eagle Nebula or Vulture Head Nebula. The night started off clear, cool, and a little damp. Just a slim crescent of a Moon in the southwest sky. Looked like it was going to be a good night until a bit after 8 PM when the clouds started to move in. By 8:20 the sky was full of clouds. Around 9:30 PM it cleared just a bit for me to get a couple more frames, but by 9:45 or so the sky was completely clouded over. I did manage to get a handful of usable frames, but no where near the few hours I had hoped for. Really neat target though… glad I at least got some light from it.

The NINA Sequence kicked off at 7:15 PM and just 4 frames into the sequence performed a meridian flip. The flip went fine but it was shortly after that when the clouds started to fill the sky. I stopped the sequence around 8:30 or so as I was just getting the light reflected of the underside of clouds. After an hour there were some breaks in the clouds and it looked like it might stay clear. I restarted the sequence at around 9:30 but clouds quickly moved in again. Ugh, I decided to park the mount, shutdown NINA, and cover the scope. Better luck next time.

Primary (Imaging) Secondary (Guiding)
Scope: Astro-Tech AT66ED with .8 Focal Reducer (320mm – F/4.8)
Filter: None
Camera: ZWO ASI294 MC Pro, Cooled to -10 C
Focuser: Gemini Autostar Focuser
Mount: Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Scope: SVBONY SV165 30mm F/4 Guide Scope
Camera: Orion Star Shooter Autoguider (OSSAG)
Telescope Control, Image Acquisition, and Image Processing Software
Equipment Control and Imaging Software: NINA/PHD2/ASCOM on a Mini-PC
Processing Software: Siril’s Interactive Companion (Sirilic), PixInsight

LBN 777 is also known as the Baby Eagle Nebula and is sometimes called the Vulture Head Nebula. It is a portion of the dust and gas cloud known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud located around 400-450 light years from Earth in the constellation of Taurus. LBN 777 is a very faint reflection nebula illuminated by the surrounding stars.

This is a Sirilic stack of 11 x 180 second exposures at 121 gain, 30 offset, and bin 2×2. Dark frames applied during the stack.
LBN 777, Baby Eagle Nebula, Vulture Head Nebula, 02/01/2025 - 11x180seconds - AT66ED F4.8
It is ok, at least LBN 777 is visible. I was not really sure it would be with so few frames. There is a lot of dark dust in the Taurus Molecular Cloud. Some other dark clouds in the surrounding FOV started to show up, it is a bit noisy but it is what it is for the limited amount of light collected.
I am going to wait to submit to the SkywatcherUSA TOTM. Hopefully I’ll get another go at it later in the month.

I did some tinkering in PixInsight to try to remove the reflections from the center star.

Need more (or better) data.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

5 × four =