Gas and Dust of the Lagoon Nebula by Fred Vanderhaven.
The Pink Lagoon, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.
This beautiful cosmic cloud is a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius. Eighteenth century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged the bright nebula as M8, while modern day astronomers recognize the Lagoon Nebula as an active stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years distant, in the direction of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Striking details can be traced through this remarkable picture, processed to remove stars and hence better reveal the Lagoon’s range of filaments of glowing hydrogen gas, dark dust clouds, and the bright, turbulent hourglass region near the image center. This color composite view was recorded under dark skies near Sydney, Australia. At the Lagoon’s estimated distance, the picture spans about 50 light-years.
Gorgeous picture. Pictures like that are probably the reason behind my selecting the job I have now…
I love the way these photos keep getting better. And I’d never heard of the Lagoon Nebula before.
Thanks Guys, Glad you liked it ;-)
And thanks for leaving a comment, Fred, it’s a beautiful photograph.
Really nice image. I have know about the Lagood nebula since entering in the deep sky imaging challange some 25 years. I do not take images in color, but do take b&w ccd images. Some are posted on the website of our club listed above. Thanks for sharing.