Hubble photographs the Pillars of Creation
A Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 mosaic of columns of dust and molecular gas in the Eagle Nebula became one of the most reproduced astronomical images ever made. Its scientific content is the mechanism it shows: the ultraviolet radiation of nearby massive young stars is simultaneously illuminating the columns and photo-evaporating them, exposing dense cores that may or may not survive long enough to form stars. Hubble re-imaged the same region with Wide Field Camera 3 in 2014, and JWST imaged it in the near infrared in 2022, where the dust becomes partly transparent and embedded protostars are visible.
Observed — measured or witnessed, with the observation cited.
Subjects
- Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) and the Pillars of Creation · celestial body · Constellation Serpens (Serpens Cauda), as seen from Earth · not located
- Giant molecular cloud · celestial body · Galactic - throughout the interstellar medium · not located
- Protostar · celestial body · Galactic - within star-forming molecular clouds · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Hubble and Webb imagery of the Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation
Supports the imaging dates and instruments and the description of the pillars as photo-evaporating columns roughly four to five light-years tall. NASA and STScI domains were blocked by the egress proxy and could not be fetched; the distance is unsettled between about 7,000 and about 5,700 light-years, the latter from a 2019 Gaia-based analysis reported in secondary coverage.
Space Telescope Science Institute / NASA · 1995; 2014; 2022 · Partly verified
NASA and STScI release material for the 1995 WFPC2 mosaic, the 2014 Wide Field Camera 3 re-imaging and the 2022 JWST NIRCam image of Messier 16