Object of the Week September 22, 2013 - Merope's and Barnard's Nebula

[reiner]

@Steve: Thanks for the mentioning of the discovery story. I think it is amazing to visually discover such an object and a major feat by Barnard. In particular given that it was a very difficult object for me even with the knowledge that it is there.

@ Paul: Yes, there are not that many images that reflect its visual appearance. To me, it was not more than a small appendix to the speckles of Merope.

@Duane and Howard: Let us know about your results. For me, it is as well on the list. I haven't observed it this season and last year I had not been successful. My last successful observation is therefore already some time ago.

[Howard B]

I was able to see IC 349 On October 4 under a dark sky (21.52) that was full of thin, high clouds. It was faint but not very difficult to see once I had the star just outside the fov, but I found that I had to wait until M45 was near the meridian so IC 349 was between Merope's diffraction spikes. When I tried earlier in the evening, the nebula was right on a diffraction spike and impossible to see. I also found that using the Televue 8-24mm zoom eyepiece worked much better than an Ethos - the edge of the zoom's fov had better contrast! That was perhaps the biggest surprise, but the view was quite nice at 250x to 400x. I haven't scanned my notes and sketches yet yet, but it looked very much like Uwe's sketch.

...Ok, I've added my sketch now:

IC349_crop.jpg IC349_crop_invert.jpg

The nebula was low contrast even with Merope outside the fov, and had a defined, straight edge and an overall triangular appearance but I couldn't see any definite internal detail.

[reiner]

I re-observed Barnards Nebula yesterday (fst 6.0 or even worse, a thin high cloud layer was disturbing). I actually did not expect to be able to be successful. With the 5mm eyepiece equipped with the bar, I placed Merope behind the occulting bar. IC 349 was immediately visible as a faint low contrast protrusion between the two spikes of Merope. The protrusion was shorter than the spikes and broader, very similar as in Howard's sketch. I noted that the nebula's edge distal to the star was quite well defined, yielding the "triangular" appearance noted by others.

I cross-checked by turning the eyepiece and looking at the other "inter-spike" areas, which were, as expected clean. If IC 349 were coinciding with one of the spikes, it's observation would likely have been much more difficult.

I found it quite astonishing that IC349 was visible under these sub-par conditions without much difficulty.