Ink Smears

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Dark inky clouds smear the cos­mic can­vas of the Eagle Neb­ula in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope.

Explore the dark pil­lars among the swaths of gas and dust. What shapes do you see in this image? Leave us a note with your story below. This part of the neb­ula is far from the cen­ter and most notable region of the neb­ula, the Pil­lars of Cre­ation.

The Eagle Neb­ula, also known as M16 and NGC 6611 is a huge star-making fac­tory. Dark regions in front of the bright parts of the neb­ula may one day be home to new stars. When clouds of gas and dust are com­pressed, grav­ity brings the mate­r­ial closer together. When con­di­tions are just right, the neb­ula may begin to glow from its own heat and a star is born.

The bright, young stars in the image form an open star clus­ter that was born from the sur­round­ing neb­ula. Ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion stream­ing from these stars warms the sur­round­ing gas and dust and causes it to glow. The bright star clus­ter was dis­cov­ered in the mid-eighteenth cen­tury. But the fainter neb­ula waited another 20 years before French astronomer Charles Messier noted it. Messier noted many other objects in the night sky. He cat­a­loged 110 objects to help astro­nom­i­cal observers find objects, such as comets, among the per­ma­nent objects in the night sky.

The Eagle Neb­ula is found about 7,000 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Ser­pens Cauda, the tail of the ser­pent. This con­stel­la­tion is found within the bright­est parts of the Milky Way among the con­stel­la­tions Sagit­tar­ius, Aquila and Ophi­uchus.