This photo of the Southern Milky Way is the setting for images from this area of the sky.

The group of stars that looks to moderns like a teapot seemed to look like an archer named Sagittarius to the ancients.

The arrows and numbers point to the objects that we will be visiting. Most of them can be seen in binoculars as fuzzy patches.

M20

M20 is a most interesting object because it represents two quite different types of nebulae. The reddish region is known as an emission nebula because it emits light as a result of the excitation of gas molecules by the extremely hot stars in the center, very much like a common fluorescent light bulb.

The blue region is simply acting like a mirror in reflecting the blue light from nearby stars and is known as a reflection nebula.