LBN 777 is a dark and dusty reflection nebula and part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud located about 400 light years away. Molecular clouds are made of diffuse cosmic dust and molecular gas. It is also known as Baby Eagle or Vulture Head Nebula. It is close to the very bright and popular Pleiades Star Cluster (~ 4 degrees) which may be why LBN 777 is much less imaged. Nearby stars are responsible for illuminating this very impressive dense cloud. Gravitational attractions cause some of the parts to form into small dense parts known as bok globules. The friction leads to an increase in temperature and protostars are able to form. In this Nebula the more dense inner part is quite dark and cataloged as Barnard 207 - this is the region where it is presumed that new stars are born.

In addition to all of the nebulosity, I really like the colorful star field and also the 'small' galaxies scattered throughout. They show surprisingly good structure which was a pleasant surprise. For processing I used BTX, GHS, and NoiseX which are new additions to my routine. I still do most of the other stuff as well except for Topaz Denoise which I have cut back on - NoiseX seems to be doing a much better job. Capturing was pretty much a breeze since I was using the shed for this object so I just turned it on for the few hours that it was visible when the moon was not out and then just turned it off (it may have looked hard since it took 11 sessions over a 1.5 months). I could have gone to another but I already have too much stuff on the plate plus I still have a backlog of images that need processing, maybe when I retire I will be more efficient. One last thing, although I do some enhancement of the dust color, it is pretty much what is there so the dust has a more brown tint as does LBN 644 (Drunken Dragon Nebula), however, when I did LBN 644 a couple of months ago the natural color was more gray so I went with it. I just think it is kind of interesting how the dust appears.

Dates: 11-2, 19, 20, 21, 22, 28, 30, 12-1, 12, 13, 14, 18