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Photographed at Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada

* Temperature 13 degrees C.

* Altitude of the nebula while I was photographing it: 19 degrees

This large glowing cloud of red hydrogen gas - famous among amateur astronomers - is faintly visible to the unaided eye, and rides very low in the summer sky as seen from the northern hemisphere.

Just to the left of centre is NGC 6530, a bright very young (~2 million years) open cluster of stars that were likely formed from the gases of the nebula itself.

Total exposure time: 8 minutes

For a wide-angle view of this object with the nearby Trifid Nebula, from June 20, click here:

www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/18883919019/

From Wikipedia:

"The Lagoon Nebula (catalogued as Messier 8, and as NGC 6523) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as a H II region.

The Lagoon Nebula was discovered by Giovanni Hodierna before 1654 and is one of only two star-forming nebulae faintly visible to the naked eye from mid-northern latitudes. Seen with binoculars, it appears as a distinct oval cloudlike patch with a definite core. In the foreground is the open cluster NGC 6530.

The Lagoon Nebula is estimated to be between 4,000 & 6,000 light years from the Earth. In the sky of Earth, it spans 90' by 40', translates to an actual dimension of 110 by 50 light years. Like many nebulae, it appears pink in time-exposure colour photos but is grey to the eye peering through binoculars or a telescope, human vision having poor colour sensitivity at low light levels. The nebula contains a number of Bok globules (dark, collapsing clouds of protostellar material), the most prominent of which have been catalogued by E. E. Barnard as B88, B89 and B296. It also includes a funnel-like or tornado-like structure caused by a hot O-type star that emanates ultraviolet light, heating and ionizing gases on the surface of the nebula. The Lagoon Nebula also contains at its centre a structure known as the Hourglass Nebula (so named by John Herschel) .... In 2006 the first four Herbig–Haro objects were detected within the Hourglass, also including HH 870. This provides the first direct evidence of active star formation by accretion within it."

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Nikon D810a camera body on Explore Scientific 152 mm (6 inch) refracting telescope

Mounted on Astrophysics 1100GTO equatorial mount

Eight stacked frames; each frame:

ISO 4000; 1-minute exposure at f/8, unguided

(with LENR - long exposure noise reduction)

Stacked in RegiStar;

Processed in Photoshop CS6 (brightness, contrast, levels, sharpening)

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