Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2002 June 26 
Posted on 06/25/2002 9:41:25 PM PDT by petuniasevan
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2002 June 26
Explanation: Clouds of glowing gas mingle with lanes of dark dust in the Trifid Nebula, a star forming region toward the constellation of Sagittarius. In the center, the three huge dark dust lanes that give the Trifid its name all come together. Mountains of opaque dust appear on the lower left, while filaments of dust are visible threaded throughout the nebula. A single massive star visible near the center causes much of the Trifid's glow. The Trifid, also known as M20, is only about 300,000 years old, making it among the youngest emission nebula known. The nebula lies about 5000 light years away and part pictured above spans about 20 light years. The above false-color digitally enhanced image was taken with the Gemini North telescope earlier this month.
Date Obtained: June 5-6th 2002
Instrument: GMOS on Gemini North
Seeing: 0.8-1.0 arcsec FWHM
Field of View: 5 arcminutes
Integration Time: 12x15sec (3 minutes total) for each filter
Filter(s): This color composite image was produced by combining three individual images using the following filter/color assignments:
Red: z-band (Effective Wavelength >=925nm)
Green: r-band (Effective Wavelength = 630nm)
Blue: g-band (Effective Wavelength = 475nm)
Processing notes: The central region was processed with a different log stretch and combined with the other images to bring out details in the central region. Initial processing was done by Tim Davidge (HIA) and IRAF was used (thanks to Tracy Beck) to perform log stretches. PhotoShop was used to make the final color composite.
In other words, it's a false-color image, processed to bring out detail. But it does make fine wallpaper.
Get on the APOD PING list! 
No kidding! M20 never looked so good.
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