Lagoon Nebula
A large cloud of glowing gas in Sagittarius with a young star cluster inside, faintly visible to the eye from a dark site.
Tonight from
Rise, highest point and set are worked out on your device for the place above.
What it is
- Kind of object
- Cloud of glowing gas (nebula)
- Distance
- 4,100 light years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 4.6, visible to the eye from a dark site, easy in binoculars
- Size in the sky
- About as wide as the full Moon
- Constellation
- Sagittarius
- Catalogue
- M 8, NGC 6523
Figures from OpenNGC, CC BY-SA 4.0; the SEDS Messier catalogue, via Wikipedia’s table of Messier objects, CC BY-SA 4.0. All sources
Near it in the sky
- Trifid NebulaA nebula in Sagittarius, right beside it, a finger’s width away.
- Small Sagittarius Star CloudA star cloud in Sagittarius, about three fingers away.
- Sagittarius ClusterA globular cluster in Sagittarius, about a fist away.
- Omega NebulaA nebula in Sagittarius, about a fist away.
- Butterfly ClusterAn open cluster in Scorpius, about a fist away.