During his extensive observations of the sky, Sir William Herschel noted regions of bright nebulosity affected by vacancies among the stars.  Visual observations of darkened regions are inherently difficult against the background of the sky, unless one can observe these dark patches associated with bright nebulosity.  Isaac Roberts began photographing regions of the sky in the late 19^th century.  Edward Emerson Barnard soon followed and assembled the first atlas of dark nebulae in the Milky Way.

Numerous catalogues and atlases have been published over the last 90 years.  Inconsistencies in the charting and cataloguing processes have left the information on dark nebulae promulgated throughout the databases.  Combining images from Barnard’s early work, the Digital Sky Survey from the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, along with several other sky surveys, a new revised catalogue is in the process.  New regions of dark nebulae are revealed and catalogued to form one complete atlas with unification of database references.