Ink Blobs

Credit: NASA, ESA

Ink blobs blot out the glow of the sur­round­ing neb­ula in this image from the NASA/ESA Hub­ble Space Tele­scope.

Explore the blobs, stars and glow­ing gas in this small part of the the Eagle Neb­ula. What other shapes or sto­ries do you see in the neb­ula? Leave a note below.

The Eagle Neb­ula, found about 6,500 light-years from Earth, is home to a stun­ning array of celes­tial won­ders. The gigan­tic neb­ula is a huge star-making fac­tory. Pil­lars of gas and dust are the birth­place of new stars and star clus­ters. The col­lec­tion of daz­zling stars in this image is part of an open star clus­ter called NGC 6611. The clus­ter was born out of the sur­round­ing cloud only about 5.5 mil­lion years ago, mak­ing it very young in astro­nom­i­cal terms. The bright blue stars in the neb­ula are very hot, send­ing out a tor­rent of sear­ing ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion that causes the sur­round­ing neb­ula to glow. Astronomers refer to these regions of gas and dust as HII regions, short­hand for areas of red-glowing, ion­ized hydro­gen gas.

Look for the inky clouds float­ing between us and the back­ground neb­ula. Astronomers call these Bok glob­ules. Astronomers can’t see through these small, cold clouds of inter­stel­lar gas and dust. Astronomer Bart Bok first observed these dark blobs of dust in the 1940s. Later the­o­ries described the clouds as being sim­i­lar to insect cocoons. Grav­ity was pulling the gas and dust together in com­pact clouds to form new stars. New infrared obser­va­tions show­ing warm bod­ies inside these clouds offer some evi­dence that this occurring.