stars were being born inside them.
They remain a subject of intense research.
An exceptional visual observer and keen astro-photographer, Barnard discovered and photographed numerous comets, dark nebulae, one of Jupiter’s moons, and was the first to use long-exposure photography to explore dark nebulae.
Through a small telescope Barnard 86 looks like a dearth of stars, or a window onto a patch of distant, clearer sky.
However, this object is actually in the foreground of the star field — a cold, dark, dense cloud made up of small dust grains that block starlight and make the region appear opaque.
It is thought to have formed from the remnants of a molecular cloud that collapsed to form the nearby star cluster NGC 6520, seen just to the left of Barnard 86 in this image.
NGC 6520 is an open star cluster that contains many hot stars that glow bright blue-white, a tell-tale sign of their youth.
Open clusters usually contain a few thousand stars that all formed at the same time, giving them all the same age.
Such clusters usually only live comparatively short lives, on the order of several hundred million years, before drifting apart.
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The incredible number of stars in this area of the sky muddles observations of this cluster, making it difficult to learn much about it.
NGC 6520’s age is thought to be around 150 million years, and both this star cluster and its dusty neighbour are thought to lie at a distance of around 6000 light-years from our Sun.
The stars that appear to be within Barnard 86 in the image above are in fact in front of it, lying between us and the dark cloud.
Although it is not certain whether this is still happening within Barnard 86, many dark nebulae are known to have new stars forming in their centres — as seen in the famous Horsehead Nebula, the striking object Lupus 3 and to a lesser extent in another of Barnard’s discoveries, the Pipe Nebula.
However, the light from the youngest stars is blocked by the surrounding dusty regions, and they can only be seen in infrared or longer-wavelength light.
EVEN THE UNIVERSE HAS A ROMANTIC SIDE: ASTRONOMERS RELEASE IMAGE OF 'RED ROSE' NEBULA - JUST IN TIME FOR VALENTINE'S DAY
As we gear up for the one day of the year dedicated to lovers, it seems that even the Universe has a romantic side.
Planetary nebula Sh2-174 gives the appearance of a red rose but is actually the remains of a dying star some 1,000 light years away.
Astronomers from the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory released the image on the eve of Valentine's Day.
Our love is in the stars: The rose-like planetary nebula Sh2-174
A planetary nebula is created when a low-mass star blows off its outer layers at the end of its life.
The core of the star remains and becomes an immensely dense white dwarf.
Usually the white dwarf is found right at the heart of the nebula, but in the case of Sh2-174 it is shifted to one side.
In the image, it is the blue star near the right hand edge of the nebula, where the gas turns from red to blue.
The image was taken using the Mayall four-metre telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.
Observations were made through four different colour filters.
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