Image Credit: J. Hester, P. Scowen (ASU), HST, NASA
Sunday, July 22, 2012
NASA Photo of the Day
Today's photo:
M16: Pillars of Creation
Image Credit: J. Hester, P. Scowen (ASU), HST, NASA
Explanation:
It was one of the most
famous images
of the 1990s.
This image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, shows evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs)
emerging from pillars of molecular
hydrogen gas and
dust.
The giant pillars are
light years in length
and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to form stars.
At each pillars' end,
the intense radiation of bright young stars
causes low density material to boil away, leaving
stellar nurseries of dense
EGGs exposed.
The Eagle Nebula, associated with the
open star cluster
M16, lies about 7000
light years away.
The pillars of creation
were
imaged again in 2007 by the orbiting
Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, leading to the conjecture that
the pillars may already have been destroyed by a local supernova, but light
from that event has yet to reach the Earth.
Image Credit: J. Hester, P. Scowen (ASU), HST, NASA
Labels:
cool stuff
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