Today's Amateur Astronomy Photo of the Day:

A three-faced nebula — emission, reflection, and dark dust woven into a single stellar nursery

Messier 20, the Trifid Nebula (NGC 6514, Sharpless 30), is an H II region and embedded young stellar cluster in the constellation Sagittarius, lying within the Sagittarius–Carina Arm of the Milky Way along one of the richest star-forming corridors visible from Earth — as one of the most iconic and frequently imaged deep-sky objects in the southern sky, M20 is rarely seen at this scale, and the 9000 mm focal length of the ASA Astrosysteme AZ 1500 brings the nebula into close range, resolving the fine structure of the dust lanes, the texture of the ionisation fronts, and the embedded detail within the bright central cavity that wider-field treatments cannot reach