Messier 24, in the center-right of this image, is the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud. It is actually part of the Sagittarius spiral arm of our galaxy. Visually, it seems detached from the band of the Milky Way, but this is only because it is not obscured by dust which is so plentiful in this region.

M24 is easily visible to the unaided eye, elongated 2 x 1 degrees. It is located 2.5 degrees north of Mu Sagittarii in the constellation of Sagittarius.

M24 was called Delle Caustiche by the Jesuit priest Father Sechi, a 19th century observer.

The Small Sagittarius Star Cloud is made up of countless thousands of individual stars which are unresolved to the unaided eye. In a telescope more and more of these stars can be resolved as the aperture of the scope increases.

Embedded in M24 is open cluster NGC 6603, just below center. Just above and to the left of the center of the image are two dark nebulae, Barnard 92 and Barnard 93.

To the right of M24 lies the red emission nebula IC 1284, and NGC 6589 and NGC 6590, two blue small reflection nebulae. Below these nebulae, a sporadic meteor happened to burn up in the Earth's upper atmosphere during the exposure.

M24 is more than 300 light-years wide and lies 10,000 light-years from Earth.

M24's discovery is officially credited to Charles Messier in 1764 when it was listed in his catalog, but was surely known since ancient times since it is visible to the unaided eye at a dark-sky observing site.

North is to the left in the above image.

M24 Catalogs: M24, IC 4715 Common Name: Small Sagittarius Star Cloud Object Type: Star Cloud Magnitude: 3 Size: 2° x 1° Constellation: Sagittarius Image Field Centered At: RA: 18h 17m 29s Dec: -18° 30' 03"