Barnard 344 Dark Nebula (Kevin Covey)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg) · Contains: LDN 881 · LDN 882 · LDN 883 · LDN 886 · PK077+02.1

Powered byPixInsight

Barnard 344 Dark Nebula

Powered byPixInsight

Barnard 344 Dark Nebula

Barnard 344 is a dark nebula in Cygnus not far from Sadr, the central star in the Northern Cross asterism. I first noticed this object in the lower corner of a wider angle image of the crescent nebula I took six years ago. I had no idea what it was, but I thought it looked interesting. Now that I have a longer focal length telescope, I decided to give it a try.
This image is LRGB data with some narrow band blended in mapped to their "natural" color. I mapped the SII to solid red (360), Ha to mostly red but slightly toward the blue spectrum (352) and OIII is mapped to teal (172). I used the narrow band data to add highlights to the RGB. I finally "cracked the code" on star bloat, at least for this image. I separated the stars from the rest of the image early on using Star XTerminator. This allowed me to stretch the nebula separately and add the narrowband data without worrying about affecting the stars. I then used photoshop to blend the stars back in using photoshop screen mode. I assume this is a well known image processing technique, however, I just figured it out :-) . I don't know if it will always work, but it certainly helped me on this image.
I captured the image data over 20 nights from 6/6/2021 to 7/20/2021.

Data set:
L = 17 x 600s
R = 19 x 600s
G = 19 x 600s
B= 19 x 600s
Ha = 22 x 1800s
OIII = 23 x 1800s
SII = 26 x 1800s

At some point I might process this as a narrow band image just to see how it looks.

SF Bay Area Imagers

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

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
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
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.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5132109
PixInsight job	HDYTL3BV8PO38HGF7MPLJQC3WV16CF5C
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	20h18m43s.389
RA (top/left)	20h16m48s.137
RA (top/right)	20h19m28s.507
RA (bottom/right)	20h20m39s.110
RA (bottom/left)	20h17m57s.972

Dec (center)	+39°51′07″.15
Dec (top/left)	+39°47′47″.50
Dec (top/right)	+39°30′29″.38
Dec (bottom/right)	+39°54′20″.19
Dec (bottom/left)	+40°11′45″.44

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Barnard 344 Dark Nebula

Barnard 344 Dark Nebula

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Acquired at

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Barnard 344 Dark Nebula

Barnard 344 Dark Nebula

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Acquired at

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information