Jul 11, 2026

Omega Centauri was absolutely breathtaking — the largest and brightest globular cluster in the Milky Way, resolved into a dazzling ball of millions of stars. At 10 million stars and possibly the remnant core of a dwarf galaxy, it's unlike any other cluster.

M8 gets its name from the dark "lagoon" — a channel of light-absorbing dust that splits the bright pink glow of hydrogen gas in two. The whole nebula is 110 light-years across and is actively forming new stars: at its heart sits the Hourglass Nebula, a region so violently heated by the young O-type star Herschel 36 that gas is being blown outward at supersonic speeds. The blue-white star cluster NGC 6530, embedded in the nebula, is the result of star formation that happened just a few million years ago — yesterday, in cosmic time.

whirpool galaxy was observed during the session.