APOD: 2022 May 25 - The Lively Center of the Lagoon Nebula

Good morning, Rallypoint, and welcome to this May 25th Hump Day edition of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "The Lively Center of the Lagoon Nebula." Also known as Messier 8 (M8), the Lagoon Nebula lies about 5,000 light years away near the constellation Sagittarius (The Archer). The center was first featured by APOD in June 2020, and we return here for an even closer view. The funnel clouds whipped up by the bright star Herschel 36 are each about 1/2 light-year long--a mere 2,939,312,686,591 (yes...2.9 trillion) miles or so. Makes a terrestrial tornado seem trivial, doesn't it?

I do enjoy the different perspectives offered when Hubble (and now Webb) imagery can focus in on specific features of their targets. In this closeup of the Lagoon Nebula, color is used to highlight the shear lines (temperature differences) produced by the local stellar winds. Today's APOD uses red to represent ionized sulphur, blue for double ionized oxygen, and green for ionized hydrogen.