Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) and the Pillars of Creation

node · earth · Constellation Serpens (Serpens Cauda), as seen from Earth

An emission nebula and open cluster in Serpens containing the columns of dust and molecular gas that Hubble photographed in 1995 and made famous as the Pillars of Creation. The pillars are roughly four to five light-years tall and are being both sculpted and destroyed by the ultraviolet radiation and winds of the young massive stars above them - the same radiation that lights the nebula is evaporating the material that would otherwise form more stars. The distance is genuinely unsettled: about 7,000 light-years was the long-standing figure, and a 2019 analysis using Gaia parallaxes put it closer to about 5,700 light-years. Hubble re-imaged the pillars with Wide Field Camera 3 in 2014 and JWST imaged them in the near infrared in 2022, where the dust becomes semi-transparent and embedded protostars appear. Not a place on Earth.