Nebula of the Lagoon

M8 is a diffuse Nébuleuse located in the Sagittarius visible with the naked eye under good conditions.

History

Nebula was discovered in 1747 per Guillaume the Nice one and integrated the catalog of Messier in 1764. John Herschel discovered that the most brilliant area of nebula had the shape of sand glass. This area was observed by the telescope Hubble in 1997, this one being regarded as the place of the star formation. In 1890, Agnès Clerk gave him her name of “nebula of the lagoon”.

Characteristics

The nebula of the lagoon is an immense cloud of Hydrogène and dust lit by a supergéante blue, star 9 of Sagittarius. The size of nebula is approximately 100 light-years and its distance turns around 5000 years light what gives him a apparent Diamètre three times more important than that of full the the Moon. Nebula, like many diffuse nebulas, contains a beautiful opened cluster, NGC 6530, resulting from nebula, stars young and very heats of standard O and B old of only 2 million years. The area of the sand glass, lit by the star Herschel 36, is suspectée to be the birthplace of stars.

Observation

Because of its magnitude 5, nebula is visible with the naked eye. The size connects very important object forces to pay attention to the enlargement employed to observe it. If you have a Télescope or a Telescope use the Oculaire having the focal distance most important (20 mm for example). The use of a filter UHC, very effective for this type of nebula, will undoubtedly enable you to observe nebula with more details.

Images

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