E.E. Barnard
25cm f/5 Astrograph

Elliptical, diam. 10' x 15' slightly NW and SE. One of the finest examples of a dark object seen against the ordinary sky and away from the Milky Way. The background on which the stars shine is uniform over the entire plate. The object is in a region somewhat larger than itself, where there are relatively few stars, and is black by contrast with the sky alone. It clearly shows the presence of a feeble uniform luminosity in space which, from the appearance of similar objects in widely different parts of the sky, leads to the belief that this feeble illumination of distant space is universal. If this object were seen against the star clouds of the Milky Way it would appear strikingly black.

― A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way, E.E. Barnard, 1927

Drawings, descriptions, and CCD photos are copyright Andrew Cooper unless otherwise noted, no usage without permission.

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