Trifid (M20) and Lagoon (M8) Nebulae Pictures
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This page features older and wider-field views of an incredible area of the sky. Messier objects 8 and 20 (and many more) are located Just above and to the right of the Sagittarius "teapot" asterism, in the middle of the southern summer milky way. M8 is a naked-eye object on a clear night from a dark sky. In the first image below, M8 (the bright red Lagoon nebula) is pictured on the left. To the right you can see the Trifid Nebula, M20. Above M8, looking a bit like a paw to me, are NGC6559, IC4685. Click the hyperlinks to be taken to dedicated pages featuring closer views of those objects. Other nearby objects not to be missed are Open cluster 21 (scroll down), and M24, the little starcloud. If you prefer, this page provides a pictorial index to all this.

Above: M20 and M8 from the Davis Mountains, stack of 2 exposures ~25 minutes, Nikon 300mm f2.8 lens, Kodak LE 400 film.

M8 and M20, Film

Here's the "Hour Glass" or "Lagoon" nebula (M8) and the "Trifid" (M20) nebula. I don't really see the lagoon or hour glass, but this nebula (M8) is the big red one on the left. The Trifid nebula is a cool contrast of a red emission nebula on the left and a blue reflection nebula on the right. You can make out the dust lanes in the red region. Image details: 50 minute exposure, Davis Mountains, TX, April 24, 2001, STV auto guider, Losmandy GM-11 Tak FS-102 prime focus with reducer at 610mm focal length, f5.9 Kodak PJ 400 film Negative Scan, Nikon Coolscan IV ED, Processed in Photoshop

BIG TOA 130 Film image, M20 and M8 from the NHAC Neal site, 9/4/2005

Stack of two images using using Fuji SHQ 200 film in a Nikon F2 body. Takahashi TOA 130 Not bad for a fairly heavily loaded G-11 and a quick polar alignment! Revised version (above) posted 9/10/05. Skully points out that M21 (open cluster) is visible on the upper right.

Update: http://www.pixelgraphics.org/Trifid-Lagoon.jpg links to NHAC member Jeff Winship's Trifid Lagoon shot.. Quoth Jeff:

<<<<BTW, reading your photo description, I was also a little confused as to why the Lagoon was sometimes referred to as the Hourglass nebula, and did some checking a while back. It turns out that the small bright central core area in the Lagoon IS the Hourglass (and a closeup shows it does look something like that). I thought from my image that it was just stars that I burned out. So we evidently have two objects in one. There is also an Hourglass planetary nebula, but this obviously isn't the same thing.

For a little more trivia, I was asked recently how big these objects are in the sky, and found out that the Trifid nebula is about 28 arc-minutes across, almost exactly the apparent size of the full moon. Big stuff!>>>>

A Visual Index to all the cool objects around M8 and M20 is here.

Astronomy Pictures: Dick Locke's Astrophoto Gateway page....

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