Nebulae · pillars
The Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation
The Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens, holds one of the most famous pictures in astronomy: the Pillars of Creation, columns of cold gas and dust several light-years tall that the Hubble Space Telescope photographed in 1995. They are being eaten away by the light of stars that formed just above them, and new stars are forming inside their fingertips.
- Distance
- About 7,000 light-years
- Width
- About 70 light-years
- Pillars
- Up to about 5 light-years tall
- Kind
- Emission nebula with a young star cluster, NGC 6611
- Catalogue number
- M16
- Seen in
- The constellation Serpens, in summer in the north
Columns in a storm of light
A cluster of hot, young, massive stars sits just above the pillars and pours out ultraviolet light and a wind of particles. The light strips and heats the gas it hits, and carves away the thin cloud, leaving only the densest knots standing like pillars behind, because they shield the gas in their shadow. At the tip of each finger are small dark globules, dense enough that stars are forming inside them. As the pillar is eroded, each star is uncovered.
The most famous picture
Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen made the 1995 Hubble picture, and it has been reproduced more than almost any other in astronomy. In 2022 the James Webb Space Telescope photographed the pillars again in infrared, in which the dust turns transparent and the young stars shine through. The light we see left the pillars about 7,000 years ago; whether they still stand is a question astronomers have argued over, since a nearby supernova may have swept them away since.
In Exo-View
The key below flies from the Sun to the Eagle Nebula. Its shape is made from photographs of the pillars, so it is an artist's impression of a place no one has seen from outside, and the plate says so.
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