Sagittarius Triplet (M 8, M 20, Sharpless 29)

Trifid Nebula M 20 and Lagoon Nebula M 8 are located in the Milky Way in direction of the galactic centre. Nevertheless, they are only 5,200 resp. 4,100 light-years away. The surrounding of these two famous nebulae is covered with a lot of interesting objects: The yellowish glowing globular clusters NGC 6544 and NGC 6553 south of M 20 are more distant objects located in the neighboured Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm about 10,000 or 20,000 light years away. The open cluster M 21 is in the field as well as the weak HII region Sharpless 22 south-west of M 8. Sharpless 29 is located on the other side of M 8. The so-called Psychedelic Nebula is about 5,500 light-years away and contains the star formation region NGC 6559.