LBN 923 & vdB 33 / NGC 1788 - something gained from a comedic panic

[Fegato]

LBN 923 sits on the border of Orion and Eridanus. Molecular clouds, dark nebulae and HII areas are topped with the bright reflection nebula NGC 1788 aka vdB 33. Not so often imaged due to its more famous neighbours, but there are still plenty of images around, including a very nice recent IoD on Astrobin.

I shot some Ha (dual narrowband) earlier in January when the moon was up, and was looking glumly at the forecast for the coming new moon period when a little break in the weather appeared last night and gave me 3 hours or so before the moon came up. The session was close to disaster, as I had to get it going quickly and dash out for a couple of hours. Needless to say, for the first time in months I had major connection issues - nothing would connect to the mini PC on my tripod tray. I ended up running around pulling wires out left right and centre, and in the end I assumed that my OTA mounted Powerbox had given up the ghost, causing issues with power distribution, as well as causing all the USB from my mount hub to fail. I gave up on dew control, replugged the cameras into the mount USB, got it all going, and rushed off. When I came back, I realised that the guide camera had disconnected before it even got going. Anyway - I got 2 hours of data, and if nothing else, this shows that guiding at 30s with my rig is somewhat unnecessary (albeit I lost all my dithering too).

Of course - this morning I take a look at the rig, and realise that the power feed into the mount had become unplugged... in my hurry, I forgot to check the obvious! What a berk! More haste less speed as they say...

Anyway, here it is - broadband enhanced with Ha / Hb (fed the Ha into red channel and blue channel at 20% of red). RASA 11 v2 on CEM120, ASI2400MC Pro, 236 x 30s plus 104 x 60s (NBZ dual narrowband filter)

[carastro]

Really good.  I planned to try that target some years ago but never managed it.   Nice to see it in context too. 

[Fegato]

4 minutes ago, carastro said:

Really good.  I planned to try that target some years ago but never managed it.   Nice to see it in context too. 

thanks Carole!  Looks a bit 'soft' now I look at it again, but I guess it's pretty faint and stretched quite hard, so not easy to get clear details, and conditions weren't brilliant on either night. Anyway, at least it's one off my list of "in progress" targets that I can't seem to get finished!

[symmetal]

Good result considering your trials and tribulations. Your usual short exposures came to your rescue here. 🙂

Alan