The view of NGC 6334 in your eyepiece probably won't look like this, but a surprising amount of detail is visible with modest telescopes, dark skies and a nebula filter. This POSS/DSS image covers about 30x41 arc-minutes. Click on the image for a larger version.

Sometimes known as the Bear Claw Nebula, NGC 6334 in Scorpius is a somewhat challenging, though fascinating complex of nebulosity.

This star-forming region is highly reddened by interstellar dust (as much as 10 magnitudes in the blue), and is virtually invisible on blue light photographs. The nebula is about 5500 light-years away.

The nebula should be at least faintly visible in six-inch scopes. Without a filter, it's fairly difficult, but a UHC (or similar narrow-band nebula filter) should make it stand out nicely. Try a lower magnification, as the object is about 40 arc-minutes across. Using only an eight-inch scope, I was able to pick out four smooth blobs of nebulosity embedded in a faint, uneven glow. Larger scopes will undoubtedly show more nebulosity. I also tried an OIII filter, but this offered no improvement over the unfiltered view, probably because of the high extinction in the green region of the spectrum where the OIII transmits most of its light. A fascinating area, well worth the time it takes to do a detailed observation.

How to get there:

NGC 6334 is located two-thirds of the way from Epsilon Scorpii to Lambda Scorpii, or 3° WNW of Lambda.

Finder chart for NGC 6334