Last night was another cold clear night. I continued capturing data of the nebula LBN 762, also known as the Drunken Dragon Nebula. This nebula is an emission nebula located in the constellation of Aries. It is also the Skywatcher USA Target of the Month (TOTM) for December 2023.

I uncovered the scope at dark. Checked focus and did an Ekos Polar Alignment. At around 6:30 PM I started collecting light from LBN 762.

My guiding was not as good as the night before, but it was still acceptable. My RMS hovered around 1.2, where it stayed under 1 during the previous session. Guiding went a little weird (RMS > 2) after around 2 hours of captures. Not really sure what happened, but it recovered and I was able to collect the last hour data without issue.

Primary (Imaging)	Secondary (Guiding)
Scope: SVBONY SV503 102ED, 0.8 Focal Reducer Filter: None Camera: ZWO ASI294 MC Pro, Cooled to -10 C Focuser: ZWO EAF Mount: Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro	Scope: SVBONY SV106 60mm Guide Scope Camera: Orion Star Shooter Autoguider (OSSAG)

I was able to get another 3 hours of data (60 x 180 seconds) at 121 gain, 30 offset, bin 2×2. Added this to the 4 hours captured on the previous night. Stacked, cropped, and processed with flats and darks in Siril. Here are the results:

I don’t really have a good handle on what exactly I am doing in Siril. Just kind of hitting buttons and trying different things until I come up with something I like and I like this. The additional 3 hours did add a bit more detail which did not require stretching the histogram quite as much.

Funny how the TOTM site described the apparent magnitude as “LOL good luck!”. It was definitely a faint target but it did not take too much to at least see that it was there. More time revealed more details and a drunken dragon. 🙂

Going to send this off to Skywatcher USA Target of the Month (TOTM) to see if it qualifies for a patch. Looking forward to the next TOTM.

LBN 762 was an interesting object to capture. Enjoyed watching the details build and learned a bit more about post-processing. I think 7 hours is enough data for now, so going to move on to something new for the next session. I’ll probably mess around with post-processing the data I have of LBN 762 in Siril to try and learn a bit more, and I am sure I’ll revisit the Drunken Dragon in the future.