Telescope captures spectacular Lagoon Nebula, a vast cauldron of interstellar gas & dust (PHOTOS)
Check out the new amazing photos of the Lagoon Nebula, located 4,000 light years from Earth. It’s a vast, churning area of hot interstellar gas and dust, with new stars forming all over the region.
Lagoon Nebula. Also known as M8, The bright star forming region is about 5,000 light-years distant. pic.twitter.com/phILamtjVB
— Prof. Antonio Paris (@AntonioParis) August 1, 2015The image you’re seeing is 40 light years across – all in all, the Lagoon Nebula is about 110 light years in width – many billions of kilometers, and some stars in the photos are actually a few times larger than the Sun.
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The gas will form new stars, and then they in turn will take in gas and dust and form new solar systems.
I LOVE this stuff! This GORGEOUS photo is the Lagoon Nebula thru the Hubble Space Telescope! pic.twitter.com/sqgUhGytJF
— Gina Genochio (@GinaGenochio) August 2, 2015Usually, the heart of the Lagoon can’t be seen, but is filled with intense stellar tempests, as was recently seen on the photos.
The pictures of the Lagoon Nebula (in the constellation Sagittarius), 4,100 light years away from Earth, were taken by the 32-inch Schulman Telescope at the University of Arizona’s Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter.
