Messier 8 | A nebula Within A Nebula

The Lagoon Nebula (also known as Messier 8, M8 or NGC 6523) is a very large interstellar cloud in the Sagittarius Constellation .  It is considered to be an emission nebula, emitting light of various colors.

The Lagoon Nebula’s color is  pink in long time-exposed photos, although it appears grey looked directly through binoculars or a telescope. This is because human vision has a poor level of color sensitivity when the amount of  light is low. The nebula has in it’s structure Bok globules, some dark and collapsing clouds of protostellar  material. It contains also a tornado shaped channel structure, made by a hot O-type star that shapes the channel this way because it heats and ionizes the nebula’s gas surface by spreading ultraviolet light.

The center of the Lagoon Nebula is called Hourglass Nebula and within it it has been discovered an active growth process of star formation. Although it has the same name, it should not be confused with the Hourglass Nebula in the Musca Constellation .

Distance from Earth: ~ 5000 light years.

Click below for full resolution picture of Lagoon Nebula