56 August 2014 sky & telescopeOBSERVING
Deep-Sky Wonders
Where Glows the Milky Way
Sagittarius is the mother lode of star clusters and nebulae.
I stand at night and gaze up at the sky,
A huge, inverted bowl above my head;
Upon its blue-black concave surface spread,
Unnumbered twinkling lights intrigue my eye...
Across their background glows the Milky Way,
The cradle-place of new-born stars untold,
Whose light shall shine adown eternity,
When those now bright have long been dark and cold.
— A. C. Holm, The Infi nite Stars, 1925The summer Milky Way in Sagittarius is a breathtaking
sight when it graces a dark sky. In Round the Year with the
Stars, Garrett P. Serviss describes it as falling to the hori-
zon “in fl akes and sheets of silvery splendor.” Through
binoculars we behold a vista of seemingly countess stars,
“like a stupendous cavern of space all ablaze and aglitterwith millions of sparkling gems.” The Sagittarius Milky
Way is also a cradle place of newborn stars, a home for
aged stars, and a resting place for those that have reached
the end of their lives.
One striking nursery of youthful stars is the Lagoon
Nebula (M8), which appears as a brighter patch in
the Milky Way from my semirural home. Even a small
telescope reveals fl edgling suns enmeshed in a beautiful
blend of bright and dark nebulae. The sketch on the fac-
ing page shows the view through my 105-mm refractor at
87 ×. The prominent star cluster in the eastern side of the
nebula is only a few million years old, and lingering dark
regions are pregnant with stars-to-be. If you observe in a
light-polluted area, an O III or narrowband fi lter can help
unveil the Lagoon’s glowing clouds, but a fi lter also mutes
the glory of its suns.IC 1274M20M8NGC 6559ROBERT GENDLER