The Pillars of Eagle
Castle
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
What lights up
this castle of star formation? The familiar Eagle Nebula glows bright in many colors at once. The image is a
composite of three of these glowing gas colors.
Pillars of dark dust nicely outline some of the denser towers of star formation. Energetic light from young massive stars causes the gas to glow
and effectively boils away part of the dust and gas from its birth pillar.
Many of these stars
will explode after several million years, returning most of their
elements back to the nebula which formed them. This process is forming an open cluster of stars known as M16.
Image Credit & Copyright: Emanuele Colognato &
Jim Wood