Dragons behind the Pillars

Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hes­ter and P. Scowen (Ari­zona State University)

There be drag­ons in the “Pil­lars of Cre­ation.”

We’ve looked at this neb­ula called the Eagle Neb­ula before. But come back to an image over time and new things appear. This image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, is part of the Eagle Neb­ula, or M16. A bright star marks the eye of a dragon seem­ingly look­ing away from us.

This area of the Milky Way is a huge star pro­duc­ing area. At the tip of the head of the dragon are EGGs, short for evap­o­rat­ing gaseous glob­ules. EGGs are dense, com­pact pock­ets of inter­stel­lar gas and dust. And they seem to be per­fect for mak­ing stars.

The Eagle Neb­ula cre­ated its first stars only about 3 mil­lion years ago. EGGs are formed when these hot, young stars heat up the sur­face of the pil­lars caus­ing the gas to boil away into space. Astronomers call this pho­to­e­vap­o­ra­tion. When you zoom in closer, you can see the stream­ers flow­ing away from the edges of the columns. Not all the gas evap­o­rates at the same rate and EGGs, which are denser, are left behind. As more and more mate­r­ial clumps together, grav­ity can start to pull it together. When it clumps tightly enough, the cloud can col­lapse under its own weight and nuclear fusion reac­tions can start at the core. A new star is born. Because pho­to­e­vap­o­ra­tion burns away this gas and dust, some of these EGGs may not fin­ish grow­ing enough to make new stars. This image shows many EGGs caught in this situation.

Some EGGs appear as tiny bumps but oth­ers resem­ble fin­gers stick­ing out from the gas. Can you find any EGGs that have com­pletely pinched off from the pil­lars, hang­ing like teardrops in the neb­ula? Maybe you see other shapes in the Eagle Nebula.

The Eagle Neb­ula is located about 6,500 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion of Ser­pens, the serpent.