Barnard 142/143 - E Nebula

"Barnard's E" nebula (designated Barnard 142 and 143) is a pair of dark nebulae in the constellation Aquila, located about 2 degrees northwest of Altair, the constellation's brightest star. The "E" is a clearly defined dark area on a background of many colorful Milky Way stars. It has an apparent diameter of about 0.5 degrees, about the size of the full moon in the the sky. Its distance from Earth has been estimated at about 2,000 light-years.

Aquila North - Barnard's E Nebula and Environment, telelens photograph

Exposure Data

Instrument: 4.9" f/3.8 Wright-Newtonian
Exposure: L: 8 x 10 min / RGB: 19 x 5 min
Cameras: L: ATIK 383L+ / RGB: ZWO ASI294MC Pro Color
Date: L: August 3, 2013 / RGB: September 4, 2021
Location: L: Ebenwaldhöhe, Lower Austria / RGB: Postalm, Salzburg
Conditions: L: Visual limiting magnitude 6.0 mag, seeing 4/5, no wind, low humidity, 22 °C / Visual limiting magnitude 6.3 mag, SQM-L sky brightness 21.2 mag/arcsec², seeing 4/5, no wind, high humidity, 11 °C
Autoguider: Lacerta MGEN
Enhancement: File selection and bias/dark/flat calibration, star alignment and image integration, background flattening, noise reduction, deconvolution, star-background separation, color saturation, star size reduction, re-adding of the stars, L-RGB combination
Notes: A combination of luminance exposures taken at Ebenwaldhöhe in 2013 and color exposures during my stay at the Postalm in September 2021. The latter exposures were taking during a night of high humidity which eventually led to dew formation on the corrector plate of the Wright-Newtonian.