The Lagoon fills the left, the Trifid sits to its right with a dark cross of dust splitting it, and the loose scatter of stars above the Trifid is the open cluster M21. Compare the two nebulae and you get a small lesson for free: M8 is red throughout because its gas is ionised and emitting light of its own, while M20 shows red on one side and blue on the other, the blue half being dust reflecting a nearby star rather than glowing. The brown haze filling the rest of the frame is dust spread through the plane of the galaxy, and the dense star fields behind it are the inner Milky Way, the direction of the galactic centre.