Barnard 343 / LDN880
Barnard 343 is a dark nebula located in the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan). It belongs to the Gamma Cygni cloud complex.
At first glance it seems like a somewhat "boring" area, but I doubt it is. There are structures that can be seen surrounding the dark nebula as well. I bet a lot is going on there but after spending some time on the Internet searching, I didn't find much information about it.
I find dark nebulas interesting. These vast clouds are mostly composed of molecular hydrogen (the Ha data was added to the Red channel, which makes this object look very red!). These clouds are so dense that they obscure and block the light from background stars. Many of them are located where material is coalescing to form new stars. American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard was the first to create a large catalog of 182 dark nebulae in the year 1919. The list was expanded to 349 objects in 1927 after he passed away. Then, in 1962, Beverly T. Lynds (a woman astronomer, Yeay!!) published the largest catalogue of dark nebulas (1,806 objects) using the Palomar Sky Survey. She also built another catalogue of bright nebulas. Both catalogues, the LDN (Lynds Dark Nebula) and the LBN (Lynds Bright Nebula) are still widely used and referenced today.
I think I will spend some time learning (and imaging) more of these amazing objects.
Note: I am still using my ASI 1600 camera and I mitigated the microlensing effect with PS using Star Spikes Pro.
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