Dark Nebula

[Kain]

Does anyone try and look for these? I know you can only see it against a stars etc that it blocks, but I have seen no one mention on here as of yet..

Just wondered if it's possible to see up here, or is it a southern thing?

Kain

[qcdougn]

Iteresting question Kain.... I've never thought of doing it....I have enough trouble imaging the ones that are visible... I don't need a greater "difficult factor"..... The dark nebula would be cool to see maybe in a wide field image.

Doug

[Andrew]

There have been some excellent photos of the horsehead nebula posted on the forum recently.

I'd love to make a visual observation of this, but I think you'd need a 10-12" scope, although I saw one report that suggested it could be done with a 4.5" reflector!! :shock:

Must have awesome eyesight.

[daz]

Hmm, I seem to remember reading that a 12" was a minimum under very dark skies for the HH. The trouble with dark nebula is exactly that - they're dark!!

Of course, my memory might be fading here.....

[FLO]

Its the black holes I find most difficult

(They are actually listed as GOTO objects on my ETX handset :roll:)

[Astroman]

There's a BUNCH of dark nebulae you can see easily, even with the naked eye, but you do need to have dark skies. Technically, The Great Rift that runs through Cygnus is a dark nebula. It's just enormous. If you want to look for smaller pieces of dark nebulae, check out the Barnard Catalog. http://www.dvaa.org/AData/Barnard.html

The Horsehead is a dark nebula, but there's a bunch of other stuff going on there, too. Emission neb behind, etc. I've tried to see it visually in scopes up to 28", but have failed, even from Kitt Peak and Mount hopkins in AZ. Reports of seeing it in a 4.5" scope are severely exhagerated, if not delusional. (My apologies in advance, if it's anyone here.) The Snake neby, the Cocoon and The Northern Coal Sack, plus all kinds of others are lots of fun to observe visually. I managed a glimpse of The Snake, B72, at the Canyon this year. They're small generally, but pretty easy to see, once you know what to look for. As I'm constantly saying, the more you look, the more you see. So, you're correct, Kain. You need to look for the Lack of stars to see them, much like finding the Propeller in M13.

Black holes are something else. I've actually shown the blue giant that's the companion to Cygnus X-1, the "brightest" black hole candidate in Cygnus. It looks like a regular blue star, but when you tell the public it's a BH candidate, they claim they can see it! It's kind of like showing faint fuzzies too though. Once you realize how far the light has traveled to fall on your eyeball, they become something else.

I'd very much recommend going after the Barnard catalog, especially the ones with names. They'll challenge your observing skills and train you to look for details you may have otherwise missed.

[Andrew]

Thanks for the reference to the Barnard Catalog site. Very interesting + nice to have more targets to go after that are a little bit different.