Today's stunner from the Hubble Space Telescope shows clouds of gas and dust in the Lagoon Nebula, being sculpted by the intense radiation from hot young stars nearby. The nebula is so named because of a wide lagoon-shaped lane of dust at the heart of the star-forming region, 4,000 to 5,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The scene may look as placid as an earthly cloud at sunset on the first day of autumn ... but the Lagoon is actually a boiling sea of starbirth. Check out the European Space Agency's Hubble website for the full story, and don't miss this zoom-in video that shows you how to get from here to there. For more views of the cosmos, visit our Space Gallery. Check out other postings on Cosmic Log and Photoblog ... and connect with Alan via Twitter (@b0yle) or Facebook.
Waves break on a stellar lagoon
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