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Explanation: A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly. The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: M 16 - Eagle Nebula
Publications with words: M 16 - Eagle Nebula
See also:
- APOD: 2026 May 31 Á Eagle Nebula Pillars in Infrared from Hubble
- APOD: 2024 October 22 Á M16: Pillars of Star Creation
- APOD: 2023 July 25 Á The Eagle Nebula with Xray Hot Stars
- APOD: 2023 May 15 Á M16: Eagle Nebula Deep Field
- M16: A Star Forming Pillar from Webb
- Pillars of Creation
- Star Forming Eagle Nebula without Stars