May 5, 2011 - MSNBC.com
Most folks think of outer space as a vast emptiness, but if you look at the right place in the right light, you'll find beautiful clouds of glory. The Lagoon Nebula in the constellation Sagittarius, also known as M8, is such a place. This region of the nebula, 5,000 light-years from Earth, is known as the "Southern Cliff" because of the sharp dropoff that can be seen in the clouds of glowing gas and dust.
The view captured by the Gemini South telescope in Chile does not reflect what the human eye would see. If you looked at the Lagoon through a good-sized amateur telescope, you'd see a pale ghostly glow with a touch of pink. But this picture was created using filters that are sensitive to emissions from hydrogen (red) and ionized sulfur (green), plus far-infrared light (shown here in blue). That explains the psychedelic color scheme.
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