The Lagoon Nebula - M8
Emission Nebula in Sagittarius

 

            
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The Lagoon Nebula
            is over a degree across, nearly the size of this 2.5 degree field.
            Crossing diagonally through its center is Barnard 88, a river
            like dark nebula cut into parallel bands here. The splashy bright
            open cluster to the left is NGC6530, a 4.6 magnitude object,
            14 acrcmins in size. The bright object to the right of center
            in the heart of the nebula is the Hourglass Nebula. Recent Hubble
            images of this area revealed tornado like vortexes present. Numerous
            small dark globules of dust lie within this object, many of which
            contain dim infrared proto stars forming new solar systems like
            our own.

            
I imaged this nebula
            in the brightest part of our sky for the first half of the sequence,
            however careful processing removes the sky glow and enhances
            the red hydrogen components.

Optics:  8" f/4 Newtonian Astrograph w/Baader MPCC Coma Corrector
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200  
Camera:  Hutech Modified Canon XTi @ ISO800
Exposure:  24 x 5m = 2 hours
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  3/10, Transparency 6/10
Outside Temperature:  60F
Processing Tools:  Photoshop CS2, Images Plus 3.82
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