A visit to the amazing Lagoon Nebula

Editor's note: Portions of this have been previously published on the author's blog.
A dazzling gem of the nighttime summer sky is the Lagoon Nebula, a gigantic star-nest relatively near our planet (as cosmic distances go). It's bright enough that from a dark site, a person supposedly can see it with unaided eyes, toward the lower part of the southern Milky Way.During a visit to a site that Utah astronomers call Pit ‘n Pole, in Tooele County, I was awed by the beauty of the night sky: Jupi