Fairies

Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hub­ble Her­itage Team STScI/AURA)

Not all crea­tures that we see in space images have to be real. I see a winged, fairy-tale crea­ture stand­ing on a pedestal in this image.

This tower of gas and dust is part of the Eagle Neb­ula. The image from the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope helped astronomers under­stand what is going on inside this neb­ula. The tower is about 9.5 light years, or about 90 tril­lion kilo­me­ters high. That’s twice the dis­tance from the Sun to our near­est neighbor.

The Eagle Neb­ula, or M16, is a huge star nurs­ery. New stars start form­ing when the gas and dust gather together. The star begins to glow after the dense region col­lapses under its own weight. When the stars begin to glow, the new solar wind pushes gas and dust. This shock­wave pushes the gas and dust into new clumps which can become new stars too. These new stars sculpt the tower into fantasy-like shapes, eat­ing away at the cos­mic mountains.

The Eagle Neb­ula lies toward the con­stel­la­tion Ser­pens, the ser­pent, and is 6,500 light years away.