Barnard 215 is a dark nebula in Taurus. It is part of the vast Taurus Molecular Cloud.

Barnard 215 is around 450 light years away but what really caught my eye when working on this image is the number of background galaxies that are visible in this field. Here’s a starless version of the image which will make the galaxies stand out more:

The bright spot in the nebula might be a background galaxy shining through or it might be something going on in the nebula. The shape is indistinct enough that it isn’t obvious purely from the image.

I’ve been trying to figure out the catalog designations for any of these galaxies without success. Unless I’m doing something wrong they aren’t in the PGC catalog of galaxies, but it’s possible the catalog that PixInsight uses is incomplete. I’ve tried using some other tools but I need to learn more about them because I haven’t been able to get them to do anything useful. As a result, all I can say is there are a bunch of tiny background galaxies back there. My guesstimate is they are at least 300 million light years away but take that with as much salt as your blood pressure will allow.

Regardless of how far away it is, it’s a dramatic looking region of space, though to a human eye, the contrast would be so low as ti be unnoticeable except as a dark patch in the sky.

This is 41h 15m of LRGB data. For all the technical details, see astrobin.