The Central Milky Way from Lagoon to Pipe
Image Credit &
Copyright:
Gabriel Rodrigues Santos
Dark markings and colorful clouds
inhabit this stellar landscape.
The deep and expansive view spans more than 30 full moons across
crowded star fields toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.
Cataloged in
the early 20th century by astronomer
E. E. Barnard,
the obscuring interstellar dust clouds seen toward the right
include B59, B72, B77 and B78,
part of the Ophiuchus molecular cloud complex a mere 450 light-years away.
To the eye their combined shape
suggests a pipe
stem and bowl, and so the dark nebula's popular name is
the Pipe Nebula.
Three bright nebulae gathered on the left are
stellar nurseries some 5,000 light-years distant toward
the constellation Sagittarius.
In the 18th century astronomer
Charles Messier included
two of them in his catalog of bright clusters and nebulae; M8, the
largest of the triplet,
and colorful M20 just above.
The third prominent emission region includes NGC 6559 at the far left.
Itself divided by obscuring dust lanes, M20 is also known as
the Trifid.
M8's popular moniker is
the Lagoon Nebula.