Notice that some of the brighter stars are so bright that they streaked the CCD image. The central part of the nebula is visible with the dust lanes providing the darker streaks that give the nebula it's flower appearance. There is a bad column on the CCD that made the black vertical stripe. In the upper right corner there is a small white streak left by a cosmic ray passing through the CCD during the exposure.
The Trifid Nebula is in our own galaxy. It is an emission and reflection nebula (the gas glows like a neon tube after being heated by the central stars and the gas reflects the light from those stars too). A cluster of 60 stars resides inside the nebula. The nebula is so big that it can be seen with the naked eye and is only partially caught in this image.
Taken with the Lick Observatory, Nickel 1-meter telescope. 22:57
PDT, 13 July 2005. 1,000 second exposure. Taken with a V (green) filter.
There is a bad column on the right side of the CCD.
The dumbbell shape that gives this nebula its name can be seen running
from the lower left to the upper right. The gas shell that makes up the
nebula is a "planetary nebula"--the remains of a supernova explosion.
It appears that the supernova remnant star can be seen in the center of
the dumbbell shape (the brightest star in the center).