Документ взят из кэша поисковой машины. Адрес оригинального документа : http://www.arcetri.astro.it/~palla/ANDREAIMMAGINI/ISM/M16WF2.txt Дата изменения: Tue Jan 30 16:49:13 2001 Дата индексирования: Sat Dec 22 07:48:49 2007 Кодировка: Поисковые слова: clouds

RELEASE DATE: November 2, 1995

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC95-44b

STELLAR "EGGS" EMERGE FROM MOLECULAR CLOUD
(Star-Birth Clouds in M16)

This eerie, dark structure, resembling an imaginary sea serpent's head,
is a column of cool molecular hydrogen gas (two atoms of hydrogen in
each molecule) and dust that is an incubator for new stars. The stars
are embedded inside finger-like protrusions extending from the top of
the nebula. Each "fingertip" is somewhat larger than our own solar
system.

The pillar is slowly eroding away by the ultraviolet light from nearby
hot stars, a process called "photoevaporation". As it does, small
globules of especially dense gas buried within the cloud is uncovered.
These globules have been dubbed "EGGs" -- an acronym for "Evaporating
Gaseous Globules". The shadows of the EGGs protect gas behind them,
resulting in the finger-like structures at the top of the cloud.

Forming inside at least some of the EGGs are embryonic stars -- stars
that abruptly stop growing when the EGGs are uncovered and they are
separated from the larger reservoir of gas from which they were drawing
mass. Eventually the stars emerge, as the EGGs themselves succumb to
photoevaporation.

The stellar EGGS are found, appropriately enough, in the "Eagle Nebula"
(also called M16 -- the 16th object in Charles Messier's 18th century
catalog of "fuzzy" permanent objects in the sky), a nearby star-forming
region 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens.

The picture was taken on April 1, 1995 with the Hubble Space Telescope
Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The color image is constructed from
three separate images taken in the light of emission from different
types of atoms. Red shows emission from singly-ionized sulfur atoms.
Green shows emission from hydrogen. Blue shows light emitted by
doubly- ionized oxygen atoms.

Credit: Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University), and
NASA

Image files in GIF and JPEG format and captions may be accessed on
Internet via anonymous ftp from oposite.stsci.edu in /pubinfo:

GIF JPEG
PRC95-44b M16 1 Pillar gif/M16WF2.gif jpeg/M16WF2.jpg

Higher resolution versions (300 dpi JPEG) of the release photographs
will be available temporarily in /pubinfo/hrtemp: 95-44a.jpg,
95-44b.jpg and 95-44c.jpg. GIF and JPEG images, captions and press
release text are available via World Wide Web at URL
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR95/44.html, or via links in
http://www.stsci.edu/Latest.html and
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html.