I'll try to name a few objects here, starting at upper left.
At top left you have a pink cloud which is
the Eagle Nebula, M16. Below the Eagle Nebula is the
Omega Nebula, M17 and the nebula complex centered around NGC 6530
Below the OMega Nebula you can see a large spread-out brightening in the band of the Milky Way, the so-called the
Small Sagittarius Star Cloud or M24. In the link I provided here, you can see M24 flanked by the Omega Nebula at top left and a small pink cloud next to two even smaller blue clouds, at bottom. Inside M24, you can see a
small black round cloud, Barnard 92, next to another, not quite so black cloud, Barnard 93.
To the right of M24, apparently "sitting on an extension of the dark dust lane of the Milky Way", is the
open cluster M23.
Below M24 you can see the the large nebula complex made up of the
Lagoon Nebula, the
Trifid Nebula and open star cluster M21 to the upper left of it, and
a string of nebulae to the left of the Lagoon nebula.
Below the Lagoon Nebula, you can see the brightest part of the Milky Way, sometimes called the (large)
Sagittarius Star Cloud or Baade's Window. On teh opposite side of Baade's Window you can see the
Pipe Nebula.
On the far right in this image you can see an incredibly
colorful star and nebula complex. The star at bottom, which is surrounded by a large pink nebula, is Tau Scorpii, a hot blue star. The bright yellow star surrounded by a yellow reflection nebula is supergiant star Antares. The somewhat grainy "star" immediately to the right of Antares is a
globular cluster, M4. The star to the upper right of M4, surrounded by a pink nebula with a bit of blue in it, is Sigma Scorpii. The large blue reflection nebula above Antares and Sigma Scorpii is Rho Ophiuchi.
At far right in the image you have the "claws" of the Scorpion. Note the faint pink emission nebulosity around Delta Scorpii, which had an outburst a few years ago. Also note the blue reflection nebulosity around the topmost of the stars of the claws, Jabbah or Nu Scorpii, surrounded by the
Blue Horse nebula.
You can see two very red nebulae near the bottom of the image. They are the
Cat's Paw and the Bear Claw Nebulae.
To the upper left of the Cat's Paw and the Bear Claw, you can see
the Butterfly Cluster, M6, in the dark dust lane of the Milky Way. To the lower left of M6, and somewhat hard to spot because we see it across a very starry background, is
M7.
Today's APOD is lovely!
Ann
A Wide Field Image of the Galactic Center
