Call me crazy, but Barnard 15 is one of my favorite objects in the
Barnard Catalogue. It is a dark nebula located in the constellation of Perseus at a declination of +47 degrees. The nebula is comet-shaped, with a length of 20 arc-minutes and a width of 10 arc-minutes. I believe that this is the first image of this object on Astrobin, except perhaps for much wider field shots.
I like this nebula because of its simple beauty. It is just a uniformly dark patch of dust in front of a star field. The central region of the nebula blocks out the background stars, while stars can faintly be seen through the "tail". There are no reflection nebulae, emission nebulae, bright stars, or anything else in the frame to detract from the central object.
But what about Barnard 16 and 17? As the Astrobin mouseover annotation shows (seen by first clicking on the image, and then mousing over), Barnard 16 and 17 are 2 tiny patches located on the left and lower-left edge, respectively, of Barnard 15. Or at least that is what it says in Barnard's description. But I don't see anything of interest in those locations. Nothing.
I don't ever remember reading that Barnard 16 and 17 are false objects, but it certainly seems that way to me. Are the coordinates perhaps wrong, or did Dr. Barnard see somethings on the image plate which is not actually there? This region is one of those that is not shown on the Barnard Atlas book plates and so I haven't been able to examine his image of it.
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