Lagoon Nebula

The center of the Lagoon Nebula is a star-forming cyclone. We call it a cyclone because it resembles a familiar cyclone on Earth. At its center, two funnel-shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year long, were formed by extremely powerful stellar winds and intense, energetic starlight. The nearby, very bright star Hershel 36 illuminates it. The dust clouds obscure other hot stars, causing them to appear red. You can see the stars visible red behind the dust clouds in the image. When the energy from these stars touches the cold dust and gas, they can create large temperature differences that can generate wind shifts that can cause funnels to form in adjacent areas.

This image shows a 5-light-year-wide area and was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The Lagoon Nebula, also known as M8 (Messier 8), is a very large nebula located in front of the constellation Sagittarius, 6,000 light-years away. It was discovered by Guillaume Le Gentil in 1747.