Twistin' by the Lagoon

The awesome spectacle of starbirth produces extreme stellar winds
and intense energetic starlight -- bombarding dusty molecular clouds inside the Lagoon
Nebula (M8). At least two long funnel shaped clouds, each roughly half a light-year
long, have apparently been formed by this activity. They extend from the upper left
of this close-up of the bright area of the Lagoon known as 'the Hour Glass'. Are
these interstellar funnel clouds actually swirling, twisting analogs to Earthly tornados?
It's possible. As energy from nearby young hot stars, like the one at lower right,
pours into the cool dust and gas, large temperature differences in adjoining regions
can be created generating shearing winds. Confirmation of tornado-like motions
within the Lagoon's stellar nursery could come from new instruments scheduled to be
installed on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during February's servicing mission.
This picture is a recently reprocessed HST image made in 1995 as researchers
explored this nearby (5,000 light-year distant) starforming region which lies in the
direction of Sagittarius.