Barnard's Snake nebula (Peter Hannah)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Ophiuchus (Oph)

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Barnard's Snake nebula

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Barnard's Snake nebula

Officially B72 in Barnard’s catalogue of dark nebulæ, this sinuous cloud of dust is informally known as the Snake nebula or the S nebula because of its distinctive shape. Silhouetted against the myriad stars of the milky way, it lies fittingly in the constellation of Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.

Acquisition time was 6 hours through luminosity and red filters, combined and presented as a monochrome image.

Edward Emerson Barnard (1857-1923) was a prolific astronomer. Among his many achievements were the discovery of Amalthea, the fifth moon of Jupiter (and the last ever to be discovered by visual observation), and the star that bears his name. Barnard’s star, a red dwarf 6 light years away, is the closest to the Sun after the 3 stars of the Alpha Centauri system, and it is notable for its rapid motion across our line of sight, changing position by some 10.3 arcseconds per year. Thus it has moved some 17 arcminutes since its discovery in 1916, or about half the width of the full moon. Coincidentally that is about the length of the ‘S’ in this image.
Barnard spent many years as professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago, where he used the world’s largest refractor (the Yerkes 40-inch) in a photographic survey of the milky way. In the course of this work he discovered a large number of dark nebulæ and showed that they are clouds of gas and dust obscuring the more distant stars.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	8089103
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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Barnard's Snake nebula

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