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Image Gallery > Featured Image on June 30, 2009

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Trifid Nebula, M20 
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Sagittarius, the Archer 
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A giant star at the center of the Trifid Nebula is causing the vast cloud of gas and dust around it to fracture into smaller pockets, which are collapsing to form new stars. Lanes of dark dust cut across the nebula, which is colored pink by the glow of hydrogen atoms and blue by reflected starlight. The nebula is in the southern constellation Sagittarius, which is in good view on summer evenings. [Todd Boroson/NOAO/AURA/NSF] For more information, see our June 30 program.

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