Glowing Eagle

Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Pro­gramme Con­sor­tium; X-ray: ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC/XMM-Newton-SOC/Boulanger

A glow­ing eagle soars upward in this far-infrared image of the Eagle Neb­ula from ESA’s Her­schel Telescope.

Zoom into the intri­cate ten­drils of gas and sculp­tures of dust sur­round­ing M16 or the Eagle Neb­ula. Leave a note below in the com­ments and tell us what sto­ries you see?

In vis­i­ble light, the Eagle Neb­ula shines as ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion from hot stars cause gas in the neb­ula to glow. A hot, young star clus­ter known as NGC 6611 is sculpt­ing the cloud. The dark dust of the Pil­lars of Cre­ation stand in con­trast to the bright light of the inner cav­ity. The “Pil­lars” make up the main shape of the eagle.

Many sto­ries of star birth and star death play out as we com­bine light from dif­fer­ent sources. We can see the birth of new stars, peer deep into cold neb­u­lae and even get a glimpse of super­novae in the making.

The Eagle Neb­ula is found about 6,500 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Ser­pens, the Ser­pent.

Astronomers com­bined both ends of the spec­trum for this image. Using this light, the pil­lars stand out with their own light. Using far-infrared data from Her­schel and X-ray obser­va­tions from XMM-Newton’s X-Ray Tele­scope, sci­en­tists see hot young stars and the cold dust that sur­rounds them. This gives us a view of the cos­mos that we can’t see on Earth because the atmos­phere blocks that light.

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