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Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh
Explanation:
A star cluster around 2 million years young surrounded by
natal clouds of dust and glowing gas,
M16 is also
known as The Eagle Nebula.
This
beautifully detailed portrait
of the region was made with groundbased narrow and broadband image data.
It includes cosmic
sculptures made famous in
Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the starforming complex.
Described as elephant trunks or
Pillars of Creation, dense,
dusty columns rising near the center are light-years in length but
are gravitationally contracting
to
form stars.
Energetic radiation from the cluster stars erodes material near
the tips, eventually exposing the embedded new stars.
Extending from the ridge of bright emission at lower left
is another dusty starforming column known as the
Fairy
of Eagle Nebula.
M16 lies about 7,000 light-years away,
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 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: star formation - M 16
Publications with words: star formation - M 16
See also: