Looking into galactic centre area of our galaxy - the Milky Way. An area showing the Great Saggitarius Star Cloud. The bright red object lowest is called the Lagoon Nebula (M8) with the small Triffid (M20) just above it. Further up comes the Eagle (M16) from where the Hubble took the famous Pillars of Creation image, and above that the brighter Swan (M17) nebula.

The dark rift runs through this area hiding many stars with the stellar dust. This is a difficult area to image from my latitude as it is fairly low in the south. The passenger route between Chicago to Boston/NY area lies along this area making it extremely busy with aircraft with their blinking navigational lights which would ruin an exposure.

The "M" designations come from the famous French astronomer Charles Messier who catalogued nebulae and star clusters so as to not confuse them with comets for which he was hunting. Comet brought Messier fame, and gave us objects up to M110 to observe as catalogued by him. Consider the crude equipment in use back then, and their incredible cost. Small diameter telescopes of 2" or less compared to our more typical refractors of 5" aperture - to behemoth DOB's of 20 plus inches.

The ONE factor which Messier and the early astronomers enjoyed virtually everywhere including cities is dark skies without the rampant light pollution of today. Night time on a moonless night with a cloud cover would mean that you could not see your hand held in front of your face, known as Bortle 1 sky. There are only a few places left on earth with Bortle 1 conditions. On a clear moonless night with the giant planet Jupiter (390 million miles from earth) would be so bright as to cause your body to cast a shadow. We measure what we have gained with technology over the years, but are only now realizing what we have lost.