Hubble presents: The Eagle and The Pixie
"Appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula [see photo below]. The soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 57 trillion miles high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star.
"Stars in the Eagle Nebula are born in clouds of cold hydrogen gas that reside in [dynamic] neighborhoods, where energy from young stars sculpts fantasy-like landscapes in the gas. The tower may be a giant incubator for those newborn stars. A torrent of ultraviolet light from a band of massive, hot, young stars [off the top of the image] is eroding the pillar...
"Inside the gaseous tower, stars may be forming. Some of those stars may have been created by dense gas collapsing under gravity. Other stars may be forming due to pressure from gas that has been heated by the neighboring hot stars.
"The first wave of stars may have started forming before the massive star cluster began venting its scorching light. The star birth may have begun when denser regions of cold gas within the tower started collapsing under their own weight to make stars.
"The bumps and fingers of material in the center of the tower are examples of these stellar birthing areas. These regions may look small but they are roughly the size of our solar system..."
"This wide-field image of the Eagle Nebula was taken at the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera. It shows the areas seen in greater detail with Hubble's Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 in 1995 and Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2005."
These images were released in conjunction with Hubble's 15th year of operation, as you might [or might not] have known. So to wrap up this post:
"In its 15 years of viewing the sky, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken more than 700,000 exposures and probed more than 22,000 celestial targets as represented by the different colored dots in this map of the sky. All data from April 1990 through March 2005 are represented here."
"Stars in the Eagle Nebula are born in clouds of cold hydrogen gas that reside in [dynamic] neighborhoods, where energy from young stars sculpts fantasy-like landscapes in the gas. The tower may be a giant incubator for those newborn stars. A torrent of ultraviolet light from a band of massive, hot, young stars [off the top of the image] is eroding the pillar...
"Inside the gaseous tower, stars may be forming. Some of those stars may have been created by dense gas collapsing under gravity. Other stars may be forming due to pressure from gas that has been heated by the neighboring hot stars.
"The first wave of stars may have started forming before the massive star cluster began venting its scorching light. The star birth may have begun when denser regions of cold gas within the tower started collapsing under their own weight to make stars.
"The bumps and fingers of material in the center of the tower are examples of these stellar birthing areas. These regions may look small but they are roughly the size of our solar system..."
"This wide-field image of the Eagle Nebula was taken at the National Science Foundation's 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera. It shows the areas seen in greater detail with Hubble's Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 in 1995 and Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2005."
These images were released in conjunction with Hubble's 15th year of operation, as you might [or might not] have known. So to wrap up this post:
"In its 15 years of viewing the sky, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken more than 700,000 exposures and probed more than 22,000 celestial targets as represented by the different colored dots in this map of the sky. All data from April 1990 through March 2005 are represented here."
Hubble presents: The Eagle and The Pixie
mr damon, 13:59
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