The Lagoon nebula (M8) is a naked eye fuzzy patch on the sky when seen from a dark site which makes it a bright and easy target for binoculars or a small scope. M20 is an emission nebula, glowing due to the energy provided by the young stars which formed from its dust and gases.
Nearby, the Trifid nebula (M20), is similar but smaller looking with both a red component from emission and a blue component due to reflection of star light off the dust grains in the cloud surrounding it.
Much smaller and less noticeable lies NGC 6544, a globular cluster that appears here as a dense knot of stars near the bottom edge of this image and slightly to the right of the Lagoon nebula. I can find no distance information for NGC 6544, but most globular clusters orbit our galaxy on the periphery which would make this peak through our galaxy and out the other side all the more amazing.
In 2001, the discovery of a 3-millisecond binary pulsar in NGC 6544 was announced, one of the fastest pulsars known. A pulsar is a fast rotating neutron star, a leftover from a supernova. The combination of fast rotation, strong magnetic fields, and nearby gas results in radio signals that pulse on and off at the same rate as the pulsars rotation.
