North Central Kansas Astronomical Society

North Central Kansas Astronomical Society

M8 - The Lagoon Nebula
Credit & Copyright: Antonio Fernandez

Stars are battling gas and dust in the Lagoon Nebula but the photographers are winning. Also known as M8, this photogenic nebula is visible even without binoculars towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The energetic processes of star formation create not only the colors but the chaos. The red-glowing gas results from high-energy starlight striking interstellar hydrogen gas. The dark dust filaments that lace M8 were created in the atmospheres of cool giant stars and in the debris from supernovae explosions. The light from M8 we see today left about 5,000 years ago. Light takes about 50 years to cross this section of M8

NCKAS Membership Forms - (HTML), (Adobe Acrobat pdf) and (MS Word Document) Join NCKAS! Great things are afoot in the heavens and here too! Be a part of it all.
NCKAS Scheduled Viewing Events - NCKAS latest updates on viewing sessions for 2005.
NCKAS Projects - This link highlights our current NCKAS Project List.
NCKAS Members Portal to our NCKAS Members only site of discussions, images, logs, etc...
NCKAS BBS - Members Only Discussion site
NCKAS Image site - Members imaging and capturing data of special events. This page will hold all our processed images and data. The images on this page can be quite large.
NCKAS Weather Page - Current Weather and Sky information for viewing.
NCKAS Viewing Locations and Equipment - Listing of our current viewing locations and equipment in use.
NCKAS Local Astronomy Marketplace - Members Web to locally sell or buy Astronomy equipment.
Boy Scouts of America: Astronomy Merit Badge Program - Our Boy Scouts Merit Badge Program information.
NCKAS Legal - NCKAS Constitution and Bylaws, 501(c)3 Status and Exemption, etc...
KSU Student Images

Great Links:

The STScI Digital Sky Survey
SIMBAD - Astronomical Database
Clear Sky Clock to help determine if the conditions will be favorable for the area.
Meteor Observing Calendar - Gary W. Kronk's Comet Meteor Showers site

Mabee Observatory - Observatory and Astronomy information of Bethel College.
Cloudy Nights - Great site for equipment un-biased reviews
New Mexico Skies - An incredible dark sky guest observatory in southern New Mexico.
Skyhound.com - A site by Greg Crinklaw, the author of PC-Sky and SkyTools, is an accomplished astronomer, educator, and programmer.
Light Pollution guide for the North Central Kansas Region and Kansas.
Hawaiian Starlight aims at showing to the public astronomical images obtained with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).
Super Image Map of all 110 Messier Objects from The Arcturus Observatory web site by Cometman.
Listing and links of all 110 Messier Objects from APOD (Astonomy Picture of the Day).
The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).
Our local Community Network ISP NCKCN.
Search NCKAS
Dan's Astronomy Software Collection
International Dark Sky Association
Astronomy Clubs - A resource of Astronomy Clubs World-wide.
The America Association of Amateur Astronomers
Stars - Wonderful resource site on stars. Created by Jim Kaler, Prof. Emeritus of Astronomy, University of Illinois
Astronomy for Kids - Astonomy for children, students, and kids of all ages. KidsAstronomy.com, part of the KidsKnowIt Network, is the absolutely free astronomy resource designed to teach children about the exciting world of outer space.
New Scientist - Great site for science news.

If you wish to contact us, you can email info@nckas.org *Unless otherwise noted all images are from the STScI Digitized Sky Survey.

This page updated: 07/01/09 12:51:39 PM