The Eagle Nebula as You've Never Seen it Before

By Nancy Atkinson - January 17, 2012 at 3:33 PM UTC | Milky Way
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Here's a stunning new look deep inside the iconic "Pillars of Creation." As opposed to the famous Hubble Space Telescope image (below) -- which shows mainly the surface of the pillars of gas and dust -- this composite image from ESA's Herschel Space Observatory in far-infrared and XMM-Newton telescope in X-rays allows astronomers to peer inside the pillars and see more detail of the structures in this region. It shows how the hot young stars detected by the X-ray observations are carving out cavities, sculpting and interacting with the surrounding ultra-cool gas and dust.

But enjoy the view while you can. The sad part is that likely, this beautiful region has already been destroyed by a supernova 6,000 years ago. But because of the distance, we haven't seen it happen yet.

[caption id="attachment_54915" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Gas Pillars in the Eagle Nebula, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI, Hester & Scowen (Arizona State University)"]

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The Eagle Nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens. It contains a young hot star cluster, NGC6611, which is visible with modest back-yard telescopes. This cluster is sculpting and illuminating the surrounding gas and dust, resulting in a huge hollowed-out cavity and pillars, each several light-years long.

The Hubble image hinted at new stars being born within the pillars, deep inside small clumps known as 'evaporating gaseous globules' or EGGs, but because of the obscuring dust, Hubble's visible light picture was unable to see inside and prove that young stars were indeed forming.

The new image shows those hot young stars are responsible for carving the pillars.

The new image also uses data from near-infrared images from the European Southern Observatory's (ESO's) Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile, and visible-light data from its Max Planck Gesellschaft 2.2m diameter telescope at La Silla, Chile. All the individual images are below:

[caption id="attachment_92708" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="M16 seen in several different wavelengths. Credits: far-infrared: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium; ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC/XMM-Newton-SOC/Boulanger; optical: MPG/ESO; near-infrared/VLT/ISAAC/McCaughrean & Andersen/AIP/ESO"]

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Earlier mid-infrared images from ESA's Infrared Space Observatory and NASA's Spitzer, and the new XMM-Newton data, have led astronomers to suspect that one of the massive, hot stars in NGC6611 may have exploded in a supernova 6,000 years ago, emitting a shockwave that destroyed the pillars. But we won't see the destruction for several hundred years yet.

Source:

ESA

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com