This is Barnard 92, the dark region in the center of the image. Rather than an absence of light, the dark region is actually a dark nebula that’s blocking out the light coming from behind it.

This image is full of stars because Barnard 92 is part of the Sagittarius Star Cloud, which is also referred to as Messier 24. The Sagittarius Star Cloud is about 600 light years wide and hosts a broad variety of stars as shown in the image: young, blue, hot stars, to the older red giants.

Close to the dark cloud of Barnard 92 is Barnard 93, not visible in this image, which is smaller and has a different shape.

Edward Emerson Barnard discovered this dark nebula in 1919 and went on to catalog 182 such objects and 369 were published in 1927 after he died.

Acquisition and Processing

I acquired this image using iTelescope.net’s T30, a PlanewaveCDK 510mm. The exposures are as follows:

  • Luminance: 1 x 120 sec, binned 1×1
  • Red: 1 x 60 sec, binned 1×1
  • Green: 1 x 60 sec, binned 1×1
  • Blue: 1 x 60 sec, binned 1×1

This is a great result considering this is just 5 minutes of exposure.

I processed this image in PixInsight. Using Photoshop, I cropped the image and resized it.

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