Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Sagittarius (Sgr)  ·  Contains:  11 Sgr  ·  4 Sgr  ·  7 Sgr  ·  9 Sgr  ·  B296  ·  B302  ·  B303  ·  B85  ·  B88  ·  B89  ·  B91  ·  IC 1274  ·  IC 1275  ·  IC 4684  ·  IC 4685  ·  LBN 25  ·  LBN 26  ·  LBN 27  ·  LBN 28  ·  LBN 29  ·  LBN 31  ·  LBN 33  ·  LBN 34  ·  LBN 38  ·  LDN 166  ·  LDN 171  ·  LDN 180  ·  LDN 196  ·  LDN 200  ·  LDN 210  ·  And 45 more.
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M8, M20 - Lagoon and Trifid wide field 2-panel mosaic, Leo Shatz
Powered byPixInsight

M8, M20 - Lagoon and Trifid wide field 2-panel mosaic

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M8, M20 - Lagoon and Trifid wide field 2-panel mosaic, Leo Shatz
Powered byPixInsight

M8, M20 - Lagoon and Trifid wide field 2-panel mosaic

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

2-panel mosaic of M8, M20 from Negev Desert.

Lagoon Nebula is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. Located 5,200 light-years from Earth, M8 is home to its own star cluster: NGC 6530. The massive stars embedded within the nebula give off enormous amounts of ultraviolet radiation, ionizing the gas and causing it to shine. The nebula contains a number of Bok globules (dark, collapsing clouds of protostellar material).

The Trifid Nebula (Messier 20) is also an H II region. Its name means 'divided into three lobes'. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars: an emission nebula (the lower, red portion), a reflection nebula (the upper, blue portion) and a dark nebula.

The whole field is located near center of our galaxy and contains vast star fields populated by mostly yellow and old stars.

For this image I've decided to skip star reduction step, as vast star fields add to the composition and are the stuff from which Milky Way got its ancient name. Collecting more photons could be still helpful, especially for the reflection nebula and dust in M20, but since this field is populated by very bright objects, having 1.5 hours per panel gave me this result.

Text sources:

[1] Wikipedia

[2] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-8-the-lagoon-nebula

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

M8, M20 - Lagoon and Trifid wide field 2-panel mosaic, Leo Shatz