LDN 673 - a dark nebula in the Aquila Rift

LDN 673 is a dark nebula towards the constellation Aquila. The Catalogue of Dark Nebulae was created by Beverly T. Lynds (Lynds, B. 1962). The dark nebulae are types of interstellar clouds consisting of sub-micrometer-sized dust particles, coated with frozen carbon monoxide and nitrogen. They are so dense that obscure the visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it. The LDN 673 cloud demarcates the high Galactic longitude terminus of the Aquila Rift (or “Serpens-Aquila Rift").

The distance of 407 pc (1330 ly) to LDN 673 was retrieved with Gaia parallaxes of 15 member-stars bright enough to be identified (see Table 1 in Herczeg et al. 2019).

Using a novel color-composite imaging method that reveals faint Ha emission in complex environments and follow-up observations in SII revealed twelve Herbig-Haro (HH) objects in LDN 673 (Table 1 in Rector et al. 2018).

The ongoing star formation in their early phase (Young Stellar Objects - YSO) occurs in the densest part of the LDN 673 cloud (Su et al. 2020).

Charts and image details obtained from Astrometry.net

Image and FOV details

RC 12" Astrograph (IRIDA South dome)

Imaging details