The Lagoon Nebula, M8 (NGC 6523)

The Lagoon Nebula, Messier object 8 (M8) or NGC6523, in the constellation of Sagittarius. This false-color, emission-line image was created from a total of twenty-nine separate exposures taken at the Burrell Schmidt telescope of Case Western Reserve University's Warner and Swasey Observatory (the Burrell Schmidt is located on Kitt Peak, near Tucson, Arizona). The observations were made through three narrow pass-band filters centered at wavelengths of 4861 (blue), 5009 (green), and 6563 (red) angstroms. The images were taken in May and July of 1994 during the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program operated at the Kitt Peak National Observatory and supported by the National Science Foundation.