Barnard 228 / Lupus I

A fascinating region of the southern sky is a striking concentration of bright blue stars that lies just above the band of the Milky Way, in the constellation Lupus. Of course, the constellation boundaries are only arbitrary – in reality this is a vast group of stars belonging to the Scorpius–Centaurus OB association.

On wide-field images, these stars are especially beautiful. When the lens slightly bloats the stars, or when delicate veils of clouds cause them to glow softly, this striking grouping becomes particularly easy to see. To me, this cluster of stars has an almost mystical attraction.

In the midst of this stellar concentration lie large molecular clouds. One of the best known is shown here: Barnard 228, also called the Dark Wolf Nebula or Lupus I. In total, six of these dark nebula regions in Lupus have been catalogued with Roman numerals. Perhaps the most famous among them is the one forming the Bernes 149 reflection nebula, which I photographed many years ago.

Capturing Lupus I had long been on my to-do list – and this year, I finally set out to image this remarkable nebula.