Anomaly nebula 81 EP

Lagoon Nebula

RA 270.9220° · Dec -24.3802° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 9 badges

81 pts · Anomaly

Anomaly 120 pts → Mythic

The Lagoon Nebula +18
Messier object +12
Bigger on the sky than the full Moon +12
Nebula +8
Has a proper name +8
Toward the galactic centre +8
Bright deep-sky object +6
Diffuse nebula +6
On the zodiac +3

Total score 81

39 more points to reach Mythic.

Badges

Nebula · +8
Messier object · +12
Bright deep-sky object · +6
Has a proper name · +8
Diffuse nebula · +6
Toward the galactic centre · +8
On the zodiac · +3
Bigger on the sky than the full Moon · +12
The Lagoon Nebula · +18

Trivia

Hard to believe

Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M8.

What it actually is

What it actually is. A nebula: a cloud of interstellar gas and dust, thinner than the best vacuum ever made in a laboratory yet spanning light-years.

Find it in the sky

How to spot it. At magnitude 5.8 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Sagittarius.
Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around June — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

Its true colour. Nebular colours are chemistry made visible — red for hydrogen, teal for oxygen, blue where starlight is merely scattered.

What's in a name

Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.

How we came to know it

Messier's anti-list. Charles Messier was a comet hunter, and he compiled his famous catalogue in the 1770s and 80s purely as a list of fuzzy things that are NOT comets. History remembers the distractions and forgets the comets.

Properties

constellation: Sgr
dso type: Neb
mag: 5.8
messier: yes
messier number: 008
name: Lagoon Nebula
named: yes
radial velocity kms: 4
redshift: 0
size arcmin: 45

Nearby objects

About Lagoon Nebula

Lagoon Nebula is an anomaly nebula. It sits in the constellation Sgr and shines at apparent magnitude 5.8.

A nebula: a cloud of interstellar gas and dust, thinner than the best vacuum ever made in a laboratory yet spanning light-years.

How to see it

Look for Lagoon Nebula in the constellation Sgr. At apparent magnitude 5.8, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Lagoon Nebula is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why Lagoon Nebula is an anomaly nebula

Lagoon Nebula scores 81 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the anomaly tier. Another 39 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 9 science badges — Nebula, Messier object, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Diffuse nebula, Toward the galactic centre, On the zodiac and Bigger on the sky than the full Moon — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.