Respect for the Big Fuzzy

[Raymondhow]

Wasn't sure where this topic fit, so I'll call it "news"...

My astronomy outreach activities have been severely limited this year, so I've gotten more active as a Wikipedia editor. Here's a star cloud story...

For many years, there was a Wiki article called "Sagittarius Star Cloud" which was about the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, aka Messier 24.  As such it was a decent article, but many folks might instead be looking for info about the Large Sagittarius Star Cloud, the one that casual naked-eye observers first notice.  Way back in 2005 someone had complained on the Talk page about the possible confusion.

Imagine a youngster seeing a darkish sky for the first time. “What’s that bright cloud, Daddy?”  Daddy takes a casual glance at Wikipedia and says aha, that big star cloud is called Messier 24.  Oops, not quite. This confusion is not just hypothetical: I found a Finnish astrophoto webpage that has, “M24 is the Great Sagittarius Star Cloud". No no!  A great many websites refer to M24 as "the" Sagittarius Star Cloud, as if it were the only one.

Someone had to do something about these tragedies, so I created a new article for the Large Sagittarius Star Cloud. Such a prominent feature of the sky deserved some Wiki recognition anyway.  After all, that's the "steam" from the Teapot! Here's a link to the article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Sag ... Star_Cloud

The Large Cloud is not an "object" per se, but part of an object: a portion of the central galactic bulge that is not blocked by foreground dust. As the brightest, densest region of the Milky Way, it's certainly an impressive observational object. Amateur astronomers spend much time looking for the “faint fuzzies”; the Large Cloud can be thought of as the biggest, brightest “fuzzy” of them all.

When I started researching the web, I found few direct sources. The Small Cloud gets all the press, no doubt because it’s a Messier object. (Don't get me wrong, I do love viewing the Small Cloud in binoculars.) The Large Cloud gets mentioned in articles about the Milky Way, so that's mostly where I got references. Then I gathered info about various associated features, and learned about an astronomical survey called SWEEPS. Also found some good images.

I renamed the original article as "Small Sagittarius Star Cloud", then added a disambiguation page for "Sagittarius Star Cloud", which lets people choose which Cloud they care to read about.

Anyway the research was fun, and I got some good education. Thanks to Steve Gottlieb for some excellent input and review!