Barnard 160 sits quietly in Cepheus, overshadowed by the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula in IC 1396, but the dust here is just as dramatic. I wanted to give it some attention and show how the dark lanes cut through the glowing gas in a full SHO palette.

This became a month long project, captured over 17 nights for a total of 58 hours of integration. This integration project was a learning lesson, I captured in 600s exposures, meaning it takes much longer to get enough images to capture a clear background of this dark nebula, I struggled. I spent a lot of time, fighting gradients, spotty OIII data and smoothing backgrounds while trying not to lose the faint wisps.

Ha gave me the backbone of the structure, SII added warmth, and OIII finally contributed enough to bring out the cooler tones. I focused on a starless version, pulling as much detail as possible from the dust before carefully blending the stars back in so they supported the dark nebula without overwhelming it.

This is probably the most effort in a SHO project I’ve worked on so far. I learned a lot about patience — especially with OIII — and I’m somewhat happy with how it turned out. Barnard 160 finally gets a little attention of its own.