NGC 6559

NGC 6559

This is a small but beautiful Nebula with no commonly known name. It is 5000 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). The glowing region is relatively small, just a few light-years across. The glowing red regions are ionised hydrogen gas, blue regions are starlight reflected from tiny dust particles, and dark regions are thick and opaque dust.

It is probably largely overshadowed by its famous neighbour, the lagoon nebula, which is more than ten times larger and has a carefully chosen name.

(The raw data behind this image was from the public archive on Telescope Live, which I processed using PixInsight and Photoshop)