Emission nebula
Lagoon Nebula (M8)
In Sagittarius (Sgr) • Magnitude 6.0 • 1.5 degrees
Open the free AstroPlanner with Lagoon Nebula pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
A vast stellar nursery 110 light-years wide, glowing pink where hot young stars ionise the surrounding hydrogen gas. A dark dust lane cuts through the middle creating the "lagoon" that gives the nebula its name, and star formation is actively happening inside it right now.
Lagoon Nebula at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M8, N 6523 |
| Type | Emission nebula |
| Constellation | Sagittarius (Sgr) |
| Right ascension | 18h 03m 47s |
| Declination | -24° 22' 48" |
| Apparent magnitude | 6.00 |
| Surface brightness | 13.0 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 90.0 × 40.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 21° |
| Best imaging months | Mar, Apr, May |
How to image Lagoon Nebula
Lagoon Nebula sits in the constellation Sagittarius at right ascension 18h 03m 47s and declination -24° 22' 48". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window. As an emission nebula, Lagoon Nebula responds very well to dual-narrowband filters under city skies.