Barnard 144 is a dark nebula in Cygnus, embedded in the dense Cygnus Star Cloud just east of the Great Rift, around 6,000 light-years away. Unlike emission or reflection nebulae, it produces no light of its own: it is simply a vast lane of cold interstellar dust and gas blocking the view of the rich star field behind it, carving out a dark silhouette against the Milky Way. The nebula stretches some 6 degrees across, with the orange star Eta Cygni sometimes read as the eye of the fish and the nearby Tulip Nebula, Sh2-101, as its open mouth, though the resemblance is loose at best. The region also sits close to the X-ray source Cygnus X-1, one of the best-known stellar-mass black hole candidates, hidden far beyond the dust in the same line of sight.