Summer is passing quickly, so I thought I would take advantage of looking at the deep sky eye candy in the constellation Sagittarius before it disappears in the west this fall. This constellations has some of the most interesting objects to image. It is located low in the south as the sun sets and darkness deepens.
Messier 17, called the Omega Nebula or the swan nebula, is a large glowing cloud of gas, where new stars are built.
Messier 8 is an emission nebula, glowing from some of the stars embedded within the cloud of gas.
Messier 20, called the Trifid Nebula is striking because of the prominent dark lanes which are thick clouds in front of the red glowing gases.
Messier 22, is a large globular cluster of suns. There are many of these large congregations of stars orbiting our Milky Way galaxy. The largest appear so because they are generally closer to us. This cluster is estimated to be about 11,000 light years distant.
Messier 28 is another globular cluster, though it appears much smaller. This globular is about 18,000 light years from earth.
Messier 21 is a open star cluster, one of many in this part of our galaxy.
No comments:
Post a Comment