Note:  added revision E as a more vibrant rendition re the emission nebulae.

During my first night out under the stars of Cruzville, NM, this field was the first thing I pointed my 60mm "finder" scope at.  I was blown away by the Lagoon and Trifid upon seeing the first 30 second subs @ 0 gain.  It was a desperate decision to make this a 2 panel mosaic, because I knew that I would be limited in sky time, given the looming Monsoons.  Knowing my limited time, resolution, etc.  I decided that a wider field frame was appropriate.  In particular, the proximity of M8 and M20 to the northeastern part of the Large Sagittarius Starfield became an additional focal point of this session.  While the rig tracked these two sub-fields, I spent a good deal of time sitting in a recliner with my binocs.  I could see evidence of M8, M20 and a good deal of other nebular features naked eye.  The binoculars were great at seeing these features better.  Yes, I do feel that I could make out some of the brighter parts of the Lagoon.  But in reality, the bright stars of the cluster dominated.  What floored me was that I was able to clearly make out the complex filamentous nature of the "Great Rift".  Some of these filaments are very fine and complex.  This can be seen in the binoculars.  And the starlight of the galactic center silhouttes these remarkably.  What is more, the binoculars impart a 3D impression of these filaments.  No doubt this is a false impression, but still....

I am mildly pleased with the result from the rig.  And I will go into more detail below.  What I wanted to stress in this discussion, for those willing to suffer through a longer description, is this is a perfect image to highlight just how little it is that we can see with our gear.  I have stated before in my past Descriptions that science tells us that we really can see only a small fraction of the stars that are part of our galaxy.  If you peruse the Aladin database, you will find very few listed red dwarfs that show up in the imagery provided.  Yet it is estimated that at least 90% of the stars in the galaxy are red dwarf or smaller.  This is one of the reasons that the number of stars in the Milky Way have been continuously revised in a dramatically positive manner over the last decades.  I hope that the images I provide here in the mouse over and the two additional revisions make that point to those interested.  

The images I provide are a combination of mine and NIR data from 2MASS.  I chose the J-band image to illustrate this because at 1.25um it is good at seeing stars that are considerably cooler (surface temps) than what we typically image.  If you find a star that is at all redish in my OSC image, you most definitely will find that star to pop! in the J-band image.  Hot blue stars fade!  One might argue that the reason we see such a vast increase in the number of stars in these NIR images is because they are unveiled from their dusty clouds.  Really, this is unlikely the primary thing seen here.  J-band is not that long a wavelength and is not that great at penetrating clouds.  That is really the business of the longer wavelength bands that JWST uses so effectively.  (Note that the dark dust lanes still block most light from stars in the J-band.)  To me, what is really going on is that J-band here is revealing those smaller, younger, etc. redder stars that have a cooler surface temperature.  The J-band image also dispenses with the confounding emission and reflection nebula signals, that likely interfere with our seeing many stars within and in front of the super bright Lagoon nebula.

Regarding the Lagoon nebula, the Simbad annotations seen in Revisions C and D centered within the Lagoon nebula are interesting because they are mostly of Young Stellar Objects.  I find that when you see this in Aladin, it is because this area is a focus of an intense research analysis of the area.  Not that there is nothing else here but YSO!  In any case, it is clear that the Lagoon is not just the birthplace of the dozen or so hot cluster stars seen so obviously by our gear, but of hundreds of YSO as well.  This highlights just how currently active this star-birthing region is.  My guess is that the clouds of the Lagoon are being driven back and away (from us with our perspective here on earth) from the slightly older more mature hot cluster stars in the foreground.  My guess is the YSOs are those that have only very recently formed within the Lagoon cloud walls and have recently been uncovered by the cloud recession.  The Revision D NIR image shows that there are still many many more stars present in this field than just the YSO.  Certainly some of these are likely just line of sight stars from our perspective.  It would be hard to bet against that many of these "unidentified" stars also reside within the boundaries of the Lagoon itself.  I find this an enlightening and healthy example of how we humans have a tendency to think what it is we see (and hear and smell, etc.) is all that there is to our surroundings.  In fact is is but a fraction of what reality is.  Some can argue that those stars we cannot see don't really matter much.  But, if there is life in another part of our galaxy/universe, it is just those sorts of stars that are most likely to harbor that life.

Regarding the image, I find that 60mm is pretty limiting.  At a focal length of 5.9, the field of view is decent, but really does not offer much more than my RASA.  It does, however offer much less resolution and also contrast.  While the two "stars" of this image are M 8 and M 20, I really wanted to capture the Sagittarius Star Cloud.  In particular, the dark filamentous molecular clouds and knots that I could see through my binoculars!  The small scope seems not up to the task here.  Yes the star cloud is clearly a feature.  The filaments seem very less dense and less interesting than I see in other images.  My guess is the 60mm will go back onto my other scope and serve as the guider is was purchased as.  For a very light travel setup, I may explore some of the "Art" SLR lenses that yield similar resolution, but, at much wider fields of view.  This part of the galactic core seems best presented by those lenses.

For this image, I tried to apply a lighter hand in stretching and processing.  Much more work went into the prestretch part of this image, including getting a mosaic from a too short overlap!  Mostly, I wanted to get something akin to "reality" in both colors and apparent dynamic range.  A bit of star reduction in this image, but mostly it was halo reduction that was used liberally.  I expect that I will come back with a revision that gets me better contrast and detail within the core of the Lagoon.  However, this is meant to not be pixel peeped.