The Lagoon Nebula (catalogued as Messier 8 or M8, and as NGC 6523)

The Lagoon Nebula (catalogued as Messier 8 or M8, 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 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.

This image was taken from Harold Campbell AKA the hollylands just west of US27 in the florida everglades. The data was acquired using an sBig STF-8300 Mono camera and LRGB filters over the perion of 3 hours. L:7x600 binned 1 and ,RGB: 6x300 binned 2.

Annotated

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