Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

Yes folks, Space Saturday has returned! After a few months hiatus, I bring you M8: The Lagoon Nebula:

Credit: Michael Sherick (via APOD) - Clickable for larger version.

There are many photos of the Lagoon Nebula around and this is from its center and one of my favorites. This one (the Hourglass Nebula) and this one are also extremely beautiful. This is a diffuse nebula which contains a number of young stars. The glowing gasses are Hydrogen regions that are heated and illuminated by the stars from within. The nubula is about 5000 light years away towards the center of our galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius and is some 50 light years across. The different colors represent different emissions of light from various elements like hydrogen, oxygen, and silicon. Beautiful, eh?

For more astronomy photos, see my Space Saturday Archive.

Resources:
APOD: August 3rd, 2005: The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula
APOD: February 10th, 2006: M8: The Lagoon Nebula
APOD: October 6th, 2002: The Lagoon Nebula in Three Colors
SEDS: M8
SEDS: Hubble Studies the Hourglass Nebula in M8
Wikipedia: Lagoon Nebula