Barnard 5/LBN 1471 is a dark nebula in southern Perseus about half way between M45 and the California Nebula. So a rather dusty part of the sky. 42 Persei is less than a half degree from its northeastern edge though out of my frame. I had to move B 5 well east to get rid of either its glare or ghost, some positions had both in the frame. Oddly some sources claim the star is Eta Persei which is much brighter and in the northern, not southern part of the constellation. I don't know how this error got started or what keeps perpetuating it.
Barnard 5 is a rather indistinct dark nebula and I'd likely not have gone for it but for a very odd object in it. It is in the southern part of my image and thanks to poor conditions very weak. I had it on the reshoot list but that never happened. The object is a star which might be the protostar IRAS 03445+3242 that apparently illuminates a weak reflection nebula to its northwest. The position of the star is rather uncertain but lies just west and a bit south of the star in my image. The error ellipse doesn't quite reach to the star but its brightness matches and nothing else is around. The nebula to the northwest is more certain, it is [WBR2005] J034743.0+325210 and contains the Herbig Haro object HH366E5. Now that's a mouthful for such a weak object.
Several dark nebulae are parts of Barnard 5. I've tried to label the centers of some of them in the annotated image.
Surprisingly several galaxies are seen through the dust though appear heavily reddened by the dust. I suppose they could be red galaxies to start with that got even further reddened by the dust. It would be interesting to see what a spectrograph would show for their stellar makeup. I found nothing on this, however. Only two had redshift values which are shown in the annotated image. I labeled a third galaxy from the 2MASX catalog but have nothing much on it. Just that it is likely the most heavily obscured of the three. Many other, near stellar galaxies, are seen around the outside of Barnard 5 that likely are larger, bluer and brighter than seen thanks to all the dust. Two of the brightest are near the right edge a bit above the centerline.
This image is reproduced at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
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| Barnard 12/LDN 1407 is a dark nebula in southern Camelopardalis that just fits my field of view. While it blocks background stars quite well it doesn't seem any darker than the general sky. Though seems to have some blue haze not seen in the otherwise slightly red background. I found two different distance for it, 550 and 650 light-years.
A wider field of view will pick up Barnard 11 and 13 and maybe 9 to the north that I've not yet taken. Maybe next year I can get them. 11 and 9 need a larger field than I have, however.
This image is reproduced at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
B12L4X10RGB2X10-67.JPG
| Barnard 13 is listed in SIMBAD as being 0.07x0.13 minutes in size which makes no sense and the position is east of the dark nebula complex normally associated with this dark nebula. Other catalogs give the same position but at least list its size as 11x4 minutes which does fit the complex, just not its position. And yes these are J2000 coordinates. It is described as: "Irregular; irregularly darker inside with a rather sharp, short, narrow extension toward the S." It is listed with an opacity of 4 on a 1-6 scale with 6 being most opaque. Various pieces of it carry separate designations which I've listed on the annotated image.
I was intrigued by a rather colorless smudge near the center of the image. NED points to a position just east of the smudge and calls it 2MASX J04293754+5452234 with a position error circle of 1.25" radius. That just about reaches the east end of the smudge. SIMBAD lists a galaxy about 6 seconds of arc northeast of the position NED gives and calls it LEDA 2798557. It also gives it the catalog entry of ZOAG G150.98+04.36 which NED also gives it but their positions don't match. SIMBAD lists no error circle. To confuse things more when I ask The Sky to find it, it points to the faint star just east of Simbad's position. None give a magnitude for it. Nothing points to the smudge. But then NED and SIMBAD give its size as 0.09x0.08 minutes which is virtually round and best fits the starlike object that The Sky pointed to well east of the smudge. But its size is 3.4" on my image which was about my seeing for the night -- lousy. That is 0.057 minutes, smaller than NED or SIMBAD say. I'm thoroughly "Lost In Space" over this one. Maybe the smudge is just a bright piece of the obscuring nebula. If so I find no listing for it.
I had tried to find the one paper SIMBAD listed for it but that returned a paper on bees! I recently did track down the paper and find the ZOAG designation was the original discovery. That catalog has an error of 0.25 minutes or 15". That would reach the starlike object. Also, the paper says they used a microscope to separate stars from galaxies on the red POSS II plates indicating this is a starlike galaxy. So apparently The Sky is right and it is the starlike object leaving the smudge-like object that's still a mystery. Both show on the POSS plates so the smudge is real, just unidentified.
Conditions were very poor, especially for the color data. Red was especially bad. I tried on several nights but all were nearly equally bad. Red was especially nasty with stars sometimes bloating to 10" of arc in some direction then settling back down again. While I used 2 frames of each color out of 8 taken they equal less than one frame on a good night. Seeing for the luminance wasn't much better. Seeing was running 3.5" to 4". So don't look very closely at the star shapes, they are all highly distorted. So much so even RegiStar that can normally align anything refused to bring these stars into alignment and just shut down trying to match every sub to the best one. Now that's bad. Yet somehow I managed to get something usable anyway. Just ignore all the color artifacts the super noisy data created. Due to these issues, I'm reducing this one to 1.5" per pixel.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
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| Barnard 15 is a dark nebula in eastern Perseus. It is also known as LDN 1445. While Barnard 16 and 17 are also in this frame, at least their published coordinates are, I can't see them, at least as a separate object. B 16 is listed as: "Very small; elongated N and S; close to SE edge of B 15". B 17 is listed as: "Very small; elongated N and S; close to E edge of B 15." I'm afraid I can't see them, at least as separate objects in my image. All three are listed at opacity level 5 which is the darkest level so I'd think 16 and 17 would be easy to spot.
The description for B 15 is more complete: "Elliptical; diameter 15' x 10' slightly NW and SE. One of the finest examples of a dark object seen against the ordinary sky and away from the Milky Way. The background on which the stars shine is uniform over the entire plate. The object is in a region somewhat larger than itself, where there are relatively few stars, and is black by contrast with the sky alone. It clearly shows the presence of a feeble uniform luminosity in space which, from the appearance of similar objects in widely different parts of the sky, leads to the belief that this feeble illumination of distant space is universal. If this object were seen against the star clouds of the Milky Way it would appear strikingly black." These come from the catalog as published by The Delaware Valley Amateur Astronomers found at: http://www.dvaa.org/AData/Barnard.html which I've found useful for Barnard's objects.
I found no good estimate of its distance. One site says that the major dark nebula in Perseus are about 1150 light-years but nothing specific for this object.
The area in which the dark nebula is embedded is not all that bright. With normal processing, the background was only about one third brighter than normal making the image rather dark and foreboding. That might be good but some monitors that can't go down into the dark very well may have trouble separating nebula from the background. So I raised the background to a higher level than normal for my images.
This image is reproduced at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
B15-16-17L8X10RGB3X10R-67.JPG
| Barnard 23 is a dark nebula in northern Taurus. I find very little on it. It is listed as being opacity 5 in which 6 is the most opaque. Not in a dense starfield or in front of bright nebulosity it doesn't stand out as strongly as some of his dark nebulae. At the north end is the F0 main sequence star HD 29537. My luminance and blue filters picked up an off-center glow around it. The shape being constant between the filters. I suspect this means it is real and thus a reflection nebula lit by the magnitude 6.8 star. However neither SIMBAD nor any other source I checked list anything but the star at that position. I see it as a similar off center on the blue POSS II plate though it is very dim. If someone else can take this field that doesn't have the glare issues I sometimes have it would help to determine if it is real or not. Since glare patterns are almost always different in the luminance and blue filters and these are the same I left it in as a possibly valid object.
5 asteroids were caught in the image, one moving very slowly at the far right edge. See the annotated image for details.
This image is reproduced at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel. | 
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| Barnard 29 was described by Barnard as "Round; indefinite." It seems quite definite in my image. It appears surrounded by a ring of brighter material which fades away with a somewhat indefinite edge. Though I doubt that is what Barnard was referring to. Could this brighter edge be due to dust thickening before suddenly becoming opaque? Note some very red stars at the very edge of this other type of "Black Hole." It is considered a level 6 dark nebula, the highest opacity category. It certainly is dark. While I stretched the image normally the core of the cluster is nearly black rather than my usual 15 out of 256 levels. The background of unresolved stars that give my background a low light level is obscured by the dust creating the very black void. It really does appear to be a hole in the sky as some early observers believed these molecular clouds to be. I couldn't find a distance for this nebula.
While most Barnard Dark Nebulae are reproduced at 1.5" per pixel, this one is at my normal 1" per pixel resolution.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
B29L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
| The Horsehead Nebula, B33, was my very first attempt at both an H alpha image and running a script file to control imaging while I slept. This was before I had a temperature compensating focuser and proper image processing software. Still, I got rather lucky in that the temperature was stable. Stars show improper processing but the original FITS files are buried in my basement out of easy reach so I didn't reprocess it. I should take color data for this field but so far that hasn't happened.
This image is reproduced at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.
14" LX200R @ f/10, Ha=3x30', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
B33_3X30_HA_67.jpg
| GN 05.42.6 is a rather yellow reflection nebula around the pre-main sequence star FU Orionis. The star is spectral type G3Iav so is a mostly white star with a tinge of yellow. Apparently, its light is further reddened by dust to make the reflection nebula very yellow to red in color. The complex is buried in the large arc-shaped cloud Barnard 35. My FOV, when centered on FU Orionis, missed much of the arc's northern part but does capture the apex of the arc's far western extent. Some claim the cloud is shaped by Lamda Orionis about 2.5 degrees to the west. I find Lamda to be about 1055 light-years from us by Hipparcos data. That would put the nebula over 40 light-years from it at a minimum. O8 stars are powerful but are they that powerful? Maybe as there seems to be nothing else closer with the energy to do the trick and the H alpha emission is on the Lamda side. The H alpha nebula is also known as CED 59.
The arc itself is LBN 878 best I can determine. The dark clouds at the apex may be LDN 1594. Since Barnard nebulae are dark I'm not sure what his entry refers to. Its published coordinates 05h 45.5m +09°03' points to a rather bright area two minutes southeast of FU Orionis.
FU Orionis shined at magnitude 16.5 for most of telescopic history. Then in 1937 it suddenly brightened to magnitude 9.5. Since then it has slowly brightened to 8.99. I found nothing on the reflection nebula. I don't know if it existed before the brightening or not. I'll assume it likely wasn't visible. It might be a 1937 version of McNeil's Nebula. That appeared at the same time as its illuminating star. The nebulae around FU Orionis stars tend to be variable. I've not revisited this one to see if it has changed. Looking at the POSS plates from decades ago I see no obvious change so suspect this one is currently rather stable.
Conditions were very poor the night I took this image. The color data was very hard hit, especially the red frames. While the color of FU Orionis is a good match to its spectral type the faint nebulosity was down in the noise level due to clouds so highly suspect. I need to revisit this one. Preferably with a scope that can capture more of the arc.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
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| Barnard 72, the Snake or S nebula, is likely the second most famous Barnard dark nebula after B33 the Horsehead Nebula. It is listed as opacity class 6, the most obscured level. Though that appears to apply only to patches of it. Unfortunately at -23 degrees it lies somewhat below my observatory wall. Seeing this low is terrible. Between these two issues, I never attempted it before. But we had a night of horrid transparency but super seeing. Unfortunately, all my targets were faint and not coming through the gunk. I seem to have a corollary to the uncertainty principle that says the better the seeing the worse the transparency. In this case, severe smoke from Canadian fires 1000 km away was blanking the sky. It was sucking all blue as well but made for great seeing. Thus I decided to give B72 a chance as nothing else I needed was possible. Also, low in the southern sky, the smoke was much thinner yet seeing still good. Well, as good as possible this low in the sky with part of my objective blocked by the observatory wall.
When I started taking red data the observatory wall blocked well over 67% the objective. By the end of the blue data, I was only about 33% obstructed. This helped counteract the blue lost to smoke. Still, color balance across the image varied greatly depending on smoke clouds. Thus the color is so highly suspect I probably should have done this only in luminance. By the time the luminance was taken due to the angle the observatory sits the objective obstruction went from about 33% to about 10% just as it went into the Meridian Tree. So between the smoke and observatory wall, I'm surprised I got anything. I knew it was bad but didn't check it out until the light of day to see what the obstruction was looking in an eyepiece port via a flip mirror. I was rather horrified by the extent of the obstruction. I'm glad I'd already looked at the subs as otherwise, I'd likely have not given them a look. I'm amazed by what I got even with the obstruction. I did have to do a lot of work to reduce diffraction issues caused by the wall.
While the thousands of Milky Way stars lie mostly a thousand or more light-years from us, the cloud of mostly carbon compounds that make up the part of the nebula blocking starlight is only about 650 light-years distant. Of course, the main ingredient of the cloud is transparent cold hydrogen gas that can be detected only by radio telescopes. The nebula's temperature is near absolute zero which allows parts of it to collapse and form new stars.
One asteroid is in the image toward the left side a bit below the centerline on the right edge of the left side of the dark nebula. It is (3891) Werner. Here's the naming citation:
"(3891) Werner = 1981 EY31
"Named in honor of Robert A. Werner, graduate student in aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Werner's dissertation work on "Polyhedron Gravitation" has direct application to the problem of calculating orbits around small irregularly shaped objects such as minor planets. For the past eleven years, Werner has also served as the typesetter and producer of the Minor Planet Bulletin, an activity which has fostered scientific interactions on minor planet research between professional and amateur astronomers. Name suggested and citation prepared by R. P. Binzel."
So why did I take such a famous object as the Snake Nebula? For one I was surprised to find I never took it even in my film days except with a 35mm lens on a 35mm SLR camera back in the 1960's as part of a wide field shot of the summer Milky Way. It didn't turn out very good due to lots of green airglow. Many have asked me to take it but I always gave the excuse it was too low. But suddenly there was this super night, best by far of the year. The only part of the sky the smoke allowed me to look at was very low to the south where it was. The smoke soon even covered this part of the sky killing a super night. I spent more time than I should have cleaning it up but I think the effort was worth it.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL=11000XM, Paramount ME | 
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| Barnard 95/LDN 406 is a dark nebula in western Scutum about 2.6 degrees northeast of M16. That puts it rather low in my skies. I need a very good night to work this low. Seeing and transparency are usually poor at this low altitude. This was one of the very few good nights I had in 2013. While most sites say the distance to dark nebulae in Scutum is about 650 light-years the one paper I found giving a distance to it says 400 parsecs which would be twice that distance or 1300 light-years. http://cdsbib.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/cdsbib?1995A%26AS..113..325H
There's one asteroid in my image. It is in the lower left quadrant and rather lost among all the stars but does show up as a rather bright short line angled upward to the right. It is (99252) 2001 LJ1 at magnitude 17.2. I doubt I'd have noticed a typical magnitude 19 asteroid I usually pick up. While this was a good night for 2013 the variations in the asteroid trail show sky conditions varied through the exposures for the L frames with the last two being less transparent than the first two and likely through the color frames as well.
Due to moon rise limiting my imaging time I only used three luminance frames for this image. I should have eliminated a green frame rather than the luminance frame but wasn't thinking when I set up the script for this one.
This image is reproduced at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=3x10' RGB=2x10, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
BARNARD095L3X10RGB2X10R-67.JPG
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