Herschel s Eagle Nebula
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).
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
