LBN 762  is a bright reflection nebula in constellation Aries. For the first time It was identified by Lynds in 1950  and 35 years later surveyed and studied by Magnani, Blitz and Mundy as being much larger molecular cloud  and now constitutes MBM catalog as MBM13. This molecular cloud is one of the closest stellar nurseries  to our Solar System containing pre-main sequence stars. In 2008  it was imaged (probably for the first time) by Deep-Sky  Astrophotographer  Rick Beno, from his observatory in Portal, Ariz and dubbed as "Drunken Dragon Nebula".

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     High-latitude clouds are predominately diffuse or translucent and are thus difficult to detect on photographic surveys. The notable exceptions are the Lynds Dark Nebulae identified by Lynds (1962) using Palomar Sky Survey plates covering the sky north of  δ = −33◦ , and extended regions of faint (SBV > 25 mag arcsec−2 ) nebulosity seen in deep imaging surveys. The latter were first identified on the Palomar Sky Survey plates by Lynds (1965a) and in an un-published study (circa 1968) by C. R. Lynds. Sandage (1976) subsequently showed that interpretation of these structures as reflection nebulosities illuminated by the Galactic plane yielded surface brightness predictions deduced from the neutral hydrogen column density that were consistent with observations.

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     Molecular clouds are classed, following van Dishoeck & Black (1988), into three categories based primarily on the visual extinction (AV ) along the line of sight through the cloud. Diffuse clouds are identified by AV < 1 magnitude, dark clouds are marked by AV > 5 magnitudes, and translucent clouds are those with intermediate values of AV . This set of criteria also reflects the changes in astrochemistry (van Dishoeck & Black 1988). While the chemistry in diffuse clouds is largely due to photoprocesses and that in dark clouds is dominated by collisional processes, in the translucent clouds we find the conditions in which carbon is being bound up in the form of CO.

     The formation of a molecular cloud requires a column density large enough to shield H2 and CO from the ambient Galactic ultraviolet flux. Hartmann, Ballesteros-Paredes, & Bergin (2001) explain that this protection from disassociation is a necessary but not suffi- cient condition for the existence of molecular material. Other factors that influence the rate of formation of molecular gas include the gas density, the dust temperature, and pressure forces.

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     Handbook of Star Forming Regions Vol. II

    Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2008 Bo Reipurth, ed.