As noted in an earlier post, Saturday was for dark nebulae. This is the iconic Trifid Nebula that everyone has seen in TV and movies if nowhere else. It has no relationship to those walking sunflowers.It has the name due to the dark lane cutting it into three sections. The Trifid is also known as Messier 20 and the dark lanes are known as Barnard 85. Here we have the smorgasbord of deep sky object types, the red is emission nebula, the blue reflection nebula, the dark, well, dark nebula. There is also a star cluster here as this is a stellar nursery creating stars like the nearby Lagoon Nebula and winter’s Orion Nebula.
