Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Sagittarius (Sgr)  ·  Contains:  Hourglass nebula  ·  Lagoon nebula  ·  M 20  ·  M 21  ·  M 8  ·  NGC 6514  ·  NGC 6523  ·  NGC 6526  ·  NGC 6530  ·  NGC 6531  ·  NGC 6546  ·  The star 7Sgr  ·  The star 9Sgr  ·  Trifid nebula
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M8  M20, M21 and NGC 6546 - The beauty  Composite, JOAO A MATTEI
M8  M20, M21 and NGC 6546 - The beauty  Composite
Powered byPixInsight

M8 M20, M21 and NGC 6546 - The beauty Composite

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M8  M20, M21 and NGC 6546 - The beauty  Composite, JOAO A MATTEI
M8  M20, M21 and NGC 6546 - The beauty  Composite
Powered byPixInsight

M8 M20, M21 and NGC 6546 - The beauty Composite

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

This beautiful composite shows a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius. Charles Messier cataloged these objects as M8 (the major nebula on right), M20 (the bright end blue nebula) and M21 (the star cluster on bottom left). They are approximately 4,000, 5,200 and 4,200 thousand light-years from Earth, in Sagittarius Constellation.

M8 (NGC 6523) - Astronomers recognize M8, the Lagoon Nebula as an active stellar nursery, in the direction of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Hot stars in the embedded open star cluster NGC 6530 power the nebular glow. This picture shows off filaments of glowing gas and dark dust clouds.

M20 (NGC 65140 - The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. Sectioned by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds.

M21 (NGC 6531) – This Open Star Cluster has an estimate of the distance similar to M20's, but there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old. With a magnitude of 6.5, M21 is not visible to the naked eye; however, with the smallest binoculars it can be easily spotted on a dark night.

Source: APOD; Wikipedia

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

M8  M20, M21 and NGC 6546 - The beauty  Composite, JOAO A MATTEI