Barnard 135 is a dark nebula in southern Aquila. On the very left side of the image where a rather bright blue star is located is another darkening. That is Barnard 136. I didn't realize it was there so didn't frame it properly. Barnard's note on B 135 reads: "Dusky spot; diam. 13'; BD -4 4698 (magnitude 9.2) on N border; BD -4 4702" (magnitude 9.2) on SE edge" His note on B 136 reads: "Dusky spot; diam. 13'; BD -4 4698 (magnitude 9.2) on N border; BD -4 4702." While his note gives no size most catalogs list it's size at 8 minutes. In my image, it isn't nearly as dark as B 135.
However, this was taken through severe smoke which gave me lots of gradient issues. My attempt to compensate may be to blame. I just don't know. I had a link to some amateur site that listed how dark someone thought they were. I didn't always agree and not the site is gone.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RB=2x10' G=1x10'
Rick
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/OTHER/BARNARD135-BARNARD136/B135L4X10RB2X10G1X10-67.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/OTHER/BARNARD135-BARNARD136/B135L4X10RB2X10G1X10-67CROP.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/OTHER/BARNARD135-BARNARD136/B135L4X10RB2X10G1X10.JPG
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B135L4X10RB2X10G1X10-67.JPG
B135L4X10RB2X10G1X10-67CROP.JPG
B135L4X10RB2X10G1X10.JPG
| Barnard 139 is a very red dark nebula in Aquila. I couldn't find a reliable distance. One paper did assign it a distance of 600 parsecs but that was an "Assumed value" used for analyzing their data. That would translate into an "assumed" 2,000 light-years.
While I didn't realize it at the time I also caught the planetary nebula NGC 6778/6785 near the bottom of the frame. It's a rather unusual looking planetary. That's because it is "disrupted". It has a binary central star (not seen in my image) that creates two collimated outflows that are thought to be the cause of the disruption. You can read all about it at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2042v1.pdf . The distance to it is very uncertain as I found two papers saying it was between 1 and 3.7 or 1 and 4 kpc which would be 3,300 to 13,000 light-years.
The planetary was discovered by John Herschel on May 21, 1825 getting the NGC 6785 designation. Later Albert Marth recorded it on June 25, 1863 as did Edward Pickering in September 1882 getting the NGC 6778 designation.
I also caught the object known as IC 1298 which is listed as an open star cluster. But it consists of only 4 or 5 stars. Dreyer's description is very small cluster then it mentions NGC 6788 3 minutes east. SIMBAD returns "Not found in database." I guess that means they consider it nonexistent. WEBDA doesn't have it in their database of open clusters either. I've marked it anyway on the annotated image. It was discovered by Guillaume Bigourdan on July 30, 1889. At best it is likely just an asterism.
Several galaxies are seen through all the obstructing dust. I've marked the two most obvious ones. No galaxies in the field are noted at NED or SIMBAD. They are obviously reddened due to scattering of their blue light by the obscuring dust. There's a third object I noticed that is not obviously reddened at the bottom center of the image. It is noted with a question mark. I don't know if it is a galaxy that escaped the reddening of the others due to a hole in the dust or is so blue the reddening only turned it white or it is something else like a planetary nebula. I'm not fond of the galaxy idea as I see no hint of a core region seen in the other field galaxies. Neither NED nor SIMBAD show anything at its position which is about 19h 18m 00.5S -1d 36' 45". It's not in the published listings of planetary candidates. There's an unpublished list I have no access to nor did anyone I contacted about this. Right now the area is too near the sun for imaging. It will be late spring before it is high enough in my sky to try and get a higher resolution image of it. It is faintly but clearly seen in the POSS 1 and 2 images but not with enough resolution to tell much about it. I don't have an OIII filter. That might help tell if it is a planetary. That it is rather neutral in color bothers me. Galaxies should be red and most planetaries are either red or blue. Only some reflection nebulae are neutral and those are rare. Another possibility is it is just a tight grouping of faint unresolved stars. Lots of possibilities but no answers as yet. If anyone knows anything about what it is please let me know.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10' STL-11000XM, Paramount ME Related Designations for BARNARD139NGC 6778, NGC 6785, 2MASS J19182495-0135474, IRAS 19158-0141, 87GB[BWE91] 1915-0141, NVSS J191825-013546, PN G034.5-06.7, IC 1298, BARNARD139, NGC6778, IC1298, | 
B139L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
B139L4X10RGB2X10ID.JPG
| Barnard 143, along with Barnard 142 out of the frame, forms what is often called Barnard's E Nebula. My system is poorly suited for most Barnard Nebulae as they are often too large for my system. In this case, I can't quite fit Barnard 143 into the frame but can get nearly all of it. Barnard 143 constitutes the northern part of the "E" with 142 being the lower bar without the vertical piece to connect it to Barnard 143. Thus B 143 is more of a "C" than "E" in my system. It is located in Aquila about 3 degrees northwest of Altair. I found few distance estimates for it. Most seemed to say 2000 light-years.
Most images I found of this nebula pushed the contrast to where the nebula was mostly evenly dark so I was a bit surprised how easy it was to show there is quite a brightness difference across the nebula. You really have to distort the dark point to create many of the images I found. I used a very normal, for me anyway, stretch with no special treatment. Also, the brighter regions were less red than I expected. Some areas being nearly neutral in color.
Dark nebulae are some of the coldest spots in the universe with temperatures of only a very few degrees above absolute zero, usually only about 7 to 15K. I'm yet to take Barnard 142. It's of much lower contrast. While it's on the to-do list don't expect me to get to it any time soon.
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 | 
B143L4X10RGB2X10R-67.JPG
| Barnard 145 is a dark nebula not far from NGC 6888 in Cygnus. It is seen against the general nebulosity of this region of Cygnus so, therefore, must be closer but I didn't find any distance estimate for it. I couldn't even find a good estimate for the background nebulosity. Those ranged from 1,500 to over 5,000 light-years. Some of the nebulosity seems related to the dark nebula at the eastern (left) end or is in front of the dark cloud.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
B145L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
| Barnard 146 is a small, very dense dark nebula in Cygnus not far, one degree northeast, from the often imaged famous Tulip Nebula, SH2-101. In fact, it is seen in many wide-angle images of it. Though I found it misidentified in more than one image. I didn't find any image of just Barnard 146 itself and being small it is almost lost in the wide field images.
6.6 magnitude SAO 69324 a double star is composed of an O4I and 09.5II star. Per SIMBAD the star has a parallax of 0.00116 which puts it 2,800 light-years distant. For some crazy reason, The Sky gives a parallax of 0.03 mas which translates to over 100,000 light-years meaning it is far beyond our galaxy. Obviously Sum Ting Wong strikes again. The SIMBAD figure seems far more reasonable. The star, however, is likely unrelated to the nebula but I assume in front of it making the nebula more than 2800 light-years distant. I found no reliable estimate of its distance. The nebula appears to be in front of the general hydrogen cloud the pervades much of Cygnus.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
B146L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
| Barnard 147 is a dark nebula in central Cygnus east of Eta Cygni. The image is centered on the coordinates given at SIMBAD for the nebula though many amateur images consider the dark band at the top of the image as Barnard 147. Which is correct I can't say as I find both views in my research. I am going with SIMBAD. Many of the dark clouds carry other designations as well though SIMBAD had none specific to just that dark band at the top of my image.
This and other Barnard dark nebulae break with my usual tendency to go with rather unknown objects. I'd never imaged these with the 14" so bear with me as I continue to post various Barnard dark clouds from time to time. They can be rather pretty when in regions as colorful as this one. Cygnus is full of HII emission which accounts for the red in the image. The blue comes from a haze of starlit dust in the area when a bright star illuminates the dust along the plane of the Milky Way in which this image lies.
I couldn't find any distance estimate for these dark clouds or even if they are related and thus at about the same distance.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
B147L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
| Barnard 158 is a small dark nebula in Cygnus 6.75 degrees east of the North American Nebula. It is listed as about 3 minutes of arc long. Papers I found consider it a Bok globule. Though I found no distance estimate for it.
Conditions were horrid the night I took it. I took 8 luminance frames and 3 of each color but conditions went down hill such that only half the luminance was even usable, 2 of the red and only 1 of green and blue were usable. All were very hazy due to foggy conditions. I had it on the redo list for the following nights but those nights were even worse so it never happened. I decided to try again next year. But in a crazy moment I decided to see if anything could be salvaged. The result isn't great but far better than I'd have suspected from the very weak raw data. Color is very noisy and color balance highly suspect. I had some nasty blue gradients thanks to the clouds.
One galaxy shines through the dust to the north west of Barnard 158. It is 2MASX J21364960+4328061 though NED has little on it, not even a magnitude estimate. It must be darned bright to be seen through all the dust in this part of our galaxy.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' R=2x10' GB=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
B158L4X10R2X10GB1X10R2.JPG
| Barnard 160 is located in the star cluster/emission nebula IC 1396 that contains the famous Elephant Trunk Nebula in southern Cetus. While it obviously lies in front of the nebula I couldn't find a distance for it. That would put it closer than 2400 light-years. Many dark nebulae with known distances in Cetus are about 1000 light-years distant. Barnard 160 may be part of these clouds. In any case, many, some with Barnard numbers, are seen in front of this huge cloud.
The dark nebula on the left, above center, is DOBASHI 3176. The small cloud between it and Barnard 160 had no separate listing that I found. Below center left of Barnard 160 is a small two lobed dumbbell shaped very dark cloud. SIMBAD lists it as [G85] 9 part of cloud. The lower part of Barnard 160 also carries the designation DOBASHI 3168.
Barnard 160 is shown in some lists as of density 4 out of 6 in which 6 is densest. Much of it is rather low density though the various cores are at least level 4.
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 | 
B160L4X10RGB2X10R-67.jpg
| Barnard 161 is yet another dark nebula in the IC 1396 nebula/star cluster complex. Like the others, I took the luminance on a fairly good night but the color data was taken on rather poor nights of high humidity and light fog that seems to have played havoc with my color balance. It's likely these various dark nebula that Barnard cataloged against this nebula are all part of a single complex I've not found a distance for it.
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 | 
B161L4X10RGB2X10-67.JPG
| Barnard 162 is another dark nebula Barnard recorded seen against in the star cluster and nebula known as IC 1396. It's listed position is about 2.5 minutes west of the vertical dark lane with a dark blob at the bottom that is the densest part. There's only a slight dimming where it is said to be located. The dark nebula to the west is DOBASHI 3176 that is also seen on my shot of Barnard 160. There seems to be a faint connection between the two. Both images were taken through severe smoke and haze that really tore up the color balance. Getting the stars right turned the background bright blue. Trying to get the stars and nebula right required stars and nebula to be separated separately. Still getting the nebula the same for both images didn't happen. I need to redo these without the smoke and haze from fires.
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 | 
B162L4X10RGB2X10-67.JPG
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