This object is a beautiful dark nebula located in the constellation of Aquila at a declination of +11 degrees. The object is the 673rd object in Lynds Catalogue of Dark Nebulae.
The Lynds Dark Nebulae (LDN) Catalog was published by US astronomer Beverly Turner Lynds in 1962. The survey used the 48 inch Palomar telescope and includes 1802 dark nebulae down to the -33 degree declination limit of the telescope. The LDN catalogue overlaps with the more popular (but much smaller) Barnard Dark Nebulae Catalogue.
Each LDN object in the catalogue has been assigned an opacity rating, ranging from 1 (lightest) to 6 (darkest). As you might have guessed, LDN 673 has been assigned a rating of 6.
Most dark nebula have a fairly simple structure, but not this one. I love that this object is actually comprised of 12 or so individual arcing smaller objects seemingly placed at random. The molecular clouds in the local Aquila rift make the background stars look reddish throughout most of the background.
Three small but interesting objects here caught my eye and are identified in the mouseover, described here going from top to bottom:
- RNO 109 is the orange tinted nebula at upper center. RNO stands for 'Red Nebulous Object', a catalog of 150 such objects published by Dr. Martin Cohen in 1980.
- GD 218 is a magnitude 16 white dwarf located 400 light years away. It is the tiny bright blue dot roughly midway between the other two objects described here.
- V1352 Aql is a Young Stellar Object (YSO) located 1300 light years away of +11 degrees. It spans 1 arc-minute in our apparent view, which corresponds to a 0.5 light year diameter. The image of this object using my EdgeHD11 is here.
Comments