Like many of the images on this site, the M20 was captured with my Seestar S50 from my driveway in light polluted West Kendall. With a magnitude of 6.28 it can be easily captured by the Seestar.
I really like this nebula because it has a slight bluish green haze on the top portion and it is visable in the SE sky on clear nights.
The Trifid Nebula (catalogued as Messier 20 or M20 and as NGC 6514) is an H II region in the north-west of Sagittarius in a star-forming region in the Milky Way’s Scutum–Centaurus Arm.[3] It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764.[4] Its name means ‘three-lobe’. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (the relatively dense, reddish-pink portion), a reflection nebula (the mainly NNE blue portion), and a dark nebula (the apparent ‘gaps’ in the former that cause the trifurcated appearance, also designated Barnard 85). Viewed through a small telescope, the Trifid Nebula is a bright and peculiar object, and is thus a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers.
