The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation

Serpens Serpens ( grc, , , the Serpent) is a constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it remains one of the 88 modern constellations designated by the International ...

, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745–46. Both the "Eagle" and the "Star Queen" refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula, an area made famous as the " Pillars of Creation" imaged by the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most vers ...

. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned Pillars of Creation. The Eagle Nebula lies in the Sagittarius Arm of the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

Characteristics

The Eagle Nebula is part of a diffuse

emission nebula An emission nebula is a nebula formed of ionized gases that emit light of various wavelengths. The most common source of ionization is high-energy ultraviolet photons emitted from a nearby hot star. Among the several different types of emissio ...

, or

H II region An H II region or HII region is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized. It is typically in a molecular cloud of partially ionized gas in which star formation has recently taken place, with a size ranging from one to hundreds ...

, which is catalogued as IC 4703. This region of active current star formation is about 5700 light-years distant. A

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires a ...

of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula in the northeastern part is approximately 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers long. The cluster associated with the nebula has approximately 8100 stars, which are mostly concentrated in a gap in the molecular cloud to the north-west of the Pillars. The brightest star (HD 168076) has an

apparent magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's ...

of +8.24, easily visible with good binoculars. It is actually a binary star formed of an O3.5V star plus an O7.5V companion. This star has a mass of roughly 80 solar masses, and a luminosity up to 1 million times that of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. The cluster's age has been estimated to be 1–2 million years. The descriptive names reflect impressions of the shape of the central pillar rising from the southeast into the central luminous area. The name "Star Queen Nebula" was introduced by Robert Burnham, Jr., reflecting his characterization of the central pillar as the Star Queen shown in silhouette.

''"Pillars of Creation"'' region

Images produced by Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen using the

in 1995 greatly improved scientific understanding of processes inside the nebula. One of these became famous as the " Pillars of Creation", depicting a large region of star formation. Its small dark pockets are believed to be

protostar A protostar is a very young star that is still gathering mass from its parent molecular cloud. The protostellar phase is the earliest one in the process of stellar evolution. For a low-mass star (i.e. that of the Sun or lower), it lasts about 50 ...

s ( Bok globules). The pillar structure resembles that of a much larger instance in the Soul Nebula of Cassiopeia, imaged with the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2005 equally characterized as "Pillars of Star Creation". or "Pillars of Star Formation". These columns – which resemble

stalagmites A stalagmite (, ; from the Greek , from , "dropping, trickling") is a type of rock formation that rises from the floor of a cave due to the accumulation of material deposited on the floor from ceiling drippings. Stalagmites are typically co ...

protruding from the floor of a cavern – are composed of interstellar hydrogen gas and dust, which act as incubators for new stars. Inside the columns and on their surface astronomers have found knots or globules of denser gas, called EGGs ("Evaporating Gaseous Globules"). Stars are being formed inside some of these.

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

images from the Chandra observatory compared with Hubble's "Pillars" image have shown that X-ray sources (from young stars) do not coincide with the pillars, but rather randomly dot the nebula. Any protostars in the pillars'

EGGs Humans and human ancestors have scavenged and eaten animal eggs for millions of years. Humans in Southeast Asia had domesticated chickens and harvested their eggs for food by 1,500 BCE. The most widely consumed eggs are those of fowl, especial ...

are not yet hot enough to emit X-rays. Evidence from the Spitzer Space Telescope originally suggested that the pillars in M16 may be threatened by a "past supernova". Hot gas observed by Spitzer in 2007 suggested they were already – likely – being disturbed by a supernova that exploded 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Due to the distance the main blast of light would have reached

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

for a brief time 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. A more slowly moving, theorized, shock wave would have taken a few thousand years to move through the nebula and would have blown away the delicate pillars. However, in 2014 the pillars were imaged a second time by Hubble, in both visible light and infrared light. The images being 20 years later provided a new, detailed account of the rate of evaporation occurring within the pillars. No supernova is evidenced within them, and it is estimated in some form they still exist – and will appear for at least 100,000 more years.

Gallery

File:Eagle Nebula 4xHubble WikiSky.jpg, Locator of well-known areas in the nebula File:Eagle Nebula - GPN-2000-000987.jpg, The " Pillars of Creation" within the Eagle Nebula File:Eagle.column1.arp.750pix.jpg, Detail of the HST image File:Pillars of creation 2014 HST WFC3-UVIS full-res denoised.jpg, A higher-resolution HST image of the "Pillars of Creation" was taken 20 years after the original. File:M16 - Eagle nebula.jpg, The pillars are more transparent in this ESO

infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...

view. File:New view of the Pillars of Creation — infrared Heic1501b.jpg, HST infrared view File:Fairy of Eagle Nebula.jpg, The "Black Pillar" spire on the eastern perimeter is about 9.5 light-years long. File:NGC 6611 Hubble WikiSky.jpg, Open cluster within the Eagle Nebula File:Messier 16 Northwestern.jpg, Northwestern part of the region, well away from the centre File:M16 Eagle Nebula - Pillars of Creation.jpg, alt=, Starless version edit of the M16 Eagle Nebula, showing also the Pillars of Creation. Image total exposure of 15 hours, taken from a Bortle 7 in Nicosia, Cyprus File:The Eagle Nebula in SHO.jpg, alt=, The Eagle Nebula captured in the SHO Hubble palette with 3nm filters File:Pillars of Creation (NIRCam Image).png, The "Pillars of Creation" captured by JWST

NIRCam NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) is an instrument aboard the James Webb Space Telescope. It has two major tasks, as an imager from 0.6 to 5 micron wavelength, and as a wavefront sensor to keep the 18-section mirrors functioning as one. In other wor ...

File:PIA25433-EagleNebula-WISE-20221111.jpg, Eagle Nebula ("Pillars" in circle; WISE; 11 November 2022

References

External links

*
The Eagle's EGGs
– ESO Photo Release
ESO: An Eagle of Cosmic Proportions
incl. Photos & Animations
ESO: VST Captures Three-In-One
incl. Photos & Animations

SEDS Messier page on M16

Hubble telescope images on M16
Darkatmospheres.com
Eagle Nebula M16 (wide)

APOD February 8, 2009 picture Eagle Nebula *
Link "commented out" because clicking on it triggers a Trojan Horse virus warning (8 May 2009) -->
Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) at Constellation Guide
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eagle Nebula Carina–Sagittarius Arm Messier objects Serpens (constellation) Open clusters NGC objects H II regions Sharpless objects 17451231 Star-forming regions

Characteristics

''"Pillars of Creation"'' region

Gallery

See also

References

External links