Sagittarius, in Greek mythology, is not only an archer but also a centaur, half-human and half-horse. Sometimes Sagittarius identified as Chiron, the wiest centaur.
Sagittarius, in Greek mythology, is not only an archer but also a centaur, half-human and half-horse. Sometimes Sagittarius identified as Chiron, the wiest centaur.
In the sky, Sagittarius is marked by an asterism known as the Teapot, found near the archer's bow and arrow. Sagittarius appears best on a summer evening, though it never becomes high in the sky for us. Both the ecliptic - the path where you will find the planets - and the Milky Way go through it. The center of our galaxy is in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius , so the densest part of the Milky Way is there. Thus in Saggittarius we find many nebulae and star clusters. In the Lagoon Nebula shown below (M8 in Messier's catalogue), we see glowing gas given energy by embedded stars. The nebula is crossed by dark gas, which forms the lagoon that can be seen with binoculars or a telescope. The Lagoon Nebula is barely visible to the naked eye as a hazy white region about as large as the full moon.
Within a few degrees of the Lagoon Nebula lie several other beautiful nebulae and star clusters. Scanning this region of the sky with binoculars can be fun.
 The Lagoon nebula in Sagittarius. Dark dust that absorbs light from behind it makes the lagoon we see in this photo. From the rest of the nubula, we get the reddish light given off by hydrogen gas. The red color shows up only in photographs, when the film is exposed for several minutes. |
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