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Pillars of creation 2014 HST WFC3-UVIS full-res
Summary
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Pillars of Creation, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image.
Astronomers combined several Hubble exposures to assemble the wider view. The towering pillars are about 5 light-years tall. The dark, finger-like feature at bottom right may be a smaller version of the giant pillars. The new image was taken with Hubble's versatile and sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3.
The pillars are bathed in the blistering ultraviolet light from a grouping of young, massive stars located off the top of the image. Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off the pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Denser regions of the pillars are shadowing material beneath them from the powerful radiation. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth.
The colors in the image highlight emission from several chemical elements. Oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green.
A number of Herbig-Haro jets lengthened noticeably (see lower panel of linked page) in the 20-year interval between the two Hubble images.
Object Names: M16, Eagle Nebula, NGC 6611
A longer news release is linked here.
The Pillars of Creation are a famous astronomical feature located in the Eagle Nebula, a cloud of interstellar gas and dust in the constellation Serpens. The Pillars of Creation are massive pillars of gas and dust that are thought to be the site of ongoing star formation. The Pillars of Creation were first observed and photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, and the image quickly became iconic. The Pillars of Creation are considered a stunning example of the beauty and complexity of the universe, and they continue to be studied by astronomers today. The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and dust that appear – at times – semi-transparent in near-infrared light. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape – the iconic Pillars of Creation – where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. Webb’s new view of the Pillars of Creation, which were first made famous when imaged by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, will help researchers revamp their models of star formation by identifying far more precise counts of newly formed stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust in the region. Over time, they will begin to build a clearer understanding of how stars form and burst out of these dusty clouds over millions of years.
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