The Eagle
Nebula is also known as Messier 16 (M16), the Star Queen
Nebula and NGC 6611. It is relatively very young
Open
Cluster of stars located in the direction of the
constellation
Serpens the serpent unique in that it is one of the 48
constellations listed by 2nd century Ptolemy and also that it
has two separate parts in the sky that do not touch each other -
Serpens Caput (serpent’s head) and Serpens Cauda (serpent’s
tail).
Open star clusters refer to a group of tens to
thousands of stars that form out of the same molecular cloud of
gas and dust sometimes visible as a cloudy area around the stars
called a nebula. The stars in open clusters are bound together
by mutual gravitational force, and thousands of open clusters
exist in our own Milky Way Galaxy. What is unique about this
open star cluster is that we can still see its molecular cloud
as well as indications of new stars being formed. This is a
stellar nursery of sorts. Furthermore, it is probably one of the
most famous nebulae and open clusters due to the fame brought by
the Hubble Telescope in 1995 when upon imaging it identified
that it was indeed creating new stars, hence its designation at
the time “The Pillars of Creation”.
The above image has
been color coded to show different chemical composition of the
gasses within the nebula as these gasses are being energized by
nearby stars. Blue represents doubly ionized oxygen (O-III),
green is ionized hydrogen (Hɑ), and red-orange areas are ionized
sulfur (S-II). In between colors have two or more of these
gasses, for example yellow is both hydrogen and sulfur. Instead
of a normal RGB (red, green, blue) image like below, each of
these colors has been substituted with light collected through a
narrowband filter.
There are also gas and dust nodules
visible that are billions of miles across. Infrared views
through Hubble and recently Webb show that at the center of
about 10% of these nodules are stars visible only in infrared
because the gas and dust blocks other light. These stars are
forming out of the nodules, likely also to eventually form
planets around them.
Do not be fooled by the relatively
small size of the “eagle” wings. These “pillars” are 5 light
years tall, or almost twice as far as the nearest star to earth
beyond our sun. This is more than a 50,000 year journey in
humankind’s fastest ship just to go length of one eagle wing!
The first image below is the same image as above but with stars
removed. You will see the stars appearing and disappearing over
about a 6-8 second interval. Removing stars from an image often
allows more detail to be visible.
The second image below is a normal RGB image using broadband filters
of red, green, and blue. It shows the same annotated overlay when
hovering a mouse over as well as animated image showing stars
fading. Note again that more information can be viewed without the distractions of many stars.
*Using a mouse, hover over the images
above for annotations, insets, and enlargements. This hover
feature may be unavailable on smart phones.
