The Fighting Dragons of Cepheus and Their Treasures
LBN550, LBN552, LBN555, LDN1228, and an extremely small, Unnamed emission nebula (Cepheus), June 2023
Televue 127is; AP Mach2 GTO
ASI6200MM, - Baader LRGB Cmos-Optomized Broadband filters
L: (72 x 180s exposures, Bin 1x1, Gain 100)
R,G,B: (37,42,34 x 240s exposures, Bin 1x1, Gain100)

The Dark Nebulae that make up the Fighting Dragons of Cepheus are as dramatic as its name. These molecular clouds and in the processing of condensing/collapsing and fragmenting their way into being star producers in a demonstration of “order out of chaos” and seemingly (although not really) reducing entropy. What causes the clouds to nucleate and accumulate is not fully understood (or at least not expressed) by my references but it is likely a combination of gravity and other intermolecular forces (Van der Waals?). It is understood that the gas/dust cloud must be very, very, cold (<10K) or molecular jiggling will prevent the molecules from sticking together. Eventually these collapsed molecular cloud regions will form protostars that will eventually ignite in fusion and create emission nebula. I have yet to check with a Ha filter, but I believe a very small emission nebula, with a single new star at its centre, can be seen in the arm/head? of the left-hand-side dragon and is indicated on the second/mouse over image. There is something for everyone in this image, aside from violent dragons – reflection nebula and galaxies to boot.
In creating this image, I made use of the new Cranfield/Blanshan star reduction script. It creates great results, although I admit I haven’t tried out anywhere near all the options. (For the annotated image, I was trying Mikes “DrawAnnotation” script too – easy to use and great results too.) Of course, I also used GHS to tease out the dragons from the rest of the cloud – also a process created by Mike and myself). You can check out these, now essential, scripts and download them for free at cosmicphotons.com.