Gems of the sky - The Eagle Nebula

[glactus]

Messier 16 - The Eagle nebuls

Messier M 16, The Eagle Nebula, perhaps one of the most famous and easily recognized space objects, is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation of Serpens, discovered by Jean Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745-46. It is associated with a diffuse emission nebula, or H II region, which is catalogued as IC 4703. This region of active current star formation is about 7,000 light-years distant. magnitude is 8.24

Images made in 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope greatly improved our understanding of processes inside the nebula. The region of the Eagle Nebula known as the "Pillars of Creation" is a large region of star formation. Its small dark areas are believed to be protostars.


The Pillars of creation

Combination of an X-ray image from the Chandra observatory with Hubble's Pillars image have shown that X-ray sources from young stars do not coincide with the pillars, instead randomly dotting the area. This suggests that star formation may have peaked approximately one million years ago in the Eagle Nebula and any protostars in the pillars are not yet hot enough to emit X-rays.

In early 2007 scientists using the Spitzer space telescope discovered evidence that the Pillars were likely destroyed by a supernova explosion about 6,000 years ago, but the light showing the new shape of the nebula will not reach Earth for another million years.



Credits: These are NASA/Hubble images

[Andy Mac]

Visually this object is not an easy target for detecting the nebula from a city sky, although the associated cluster is easy to see. This object is also often overlooked from UK latitudes due to its southerly declination. In images, the Eagle can look very impressive. Here is my attempt of a few years back when I owned an 11" SCT.

[glactus]

That's a real beauty of the Eagle nebula Andy and I love your sliding Cat's Eye nebula avata. Well done.

[Andy Mac]

Thanks for the comment Henry but this is the first time that I've looked at this image with my new monitor (which is brighter) and I have to say that my M16 shot has to be the worst looking processing job that I have ever done (my monitor in them days was much darker at its brightest setting so I didn't see the lighter grey patch to the upper left of the nebula).

Still it's good for a giggle, if nothing else! ;D ;D