This is an 2.6 x 2.1 degree image of Lynds Dark Nebula 914 (LDN 914) in Cygnus just below the Pelican. I was attracted to it examining possible CCDNav2 targets for my new FLI ML16200 camera using it, for the first time, with the Riccardi 0.75x focal reducer/field flattener to get this large FOV. I could find only two other instances of it being imaged on the web: one by the ESA Hershel observatory in the far infrared where this “crack in the sky” was glowing and the other a luminosity image by Werner Mehl where it was completely opaque. This is a 6.7 hour LRGB version of this interesting object that apparently has been rarely imaged.
From the reference below, the LDN 914 dark nebula is a 2 degree ribbon of cold dust and gas that is about 50 light-years long and has about 800 times the mass of the Sun in total, plenty of raw material to make future stars. It glows in the far infrared emitted by very cold objects, such as clouds undergoing collapse. But in visible light, LDN 914 is black because, as we know, cold dust is extremely opaque, blocking the light from stars behind it.
Ref: Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy blog
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/05/24/herschel_telescope_image_of_a_ribbon_of_star_forming_cold_gas.htmlTaken at D.A.R.C. Observatory, Mercey Hot Springs, CA, 9/4/16, 9/24/16.
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