In 1905 the pioneering astrophotographer Edward Barnard photographed this region and described these objects as "the small [triangular] black spot B 86, with the small cluster N.G.C. 6520 just east of it." In his famous "A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way" Barnard recorded this region in black & white from Mount Wilson using a 6.25" f/5 refractor on a grainy 8"x10" glass plate. His exposure was 4 hours, manually guided of course. I wonder what he would have thought of this image.

• Object: NGC 6520 and Barnard 86 in the Sagittarius Star Cloud
• Exposure: 60 minutes @ f/6.7
• Telescope: Astro-Physics 130 EDF
• Mount: Astro-Physics 600E QMD
• Guiding: SBIG ST-4 @ 700mm
• Camera: Pentax 67
• Film: Kodak PPF 400
• Location: Vicuña, Chile
• Date: 17-Apr-02 02:11 CST
• Conditions: transparency 8/10, seeing 7/10, LVM 7, temp 55° F, RH 73%
• Processing: UMAX PowerLook 3000, Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1