Seven thousand light years from Earth, at the heart of the Eagle Nebula (M16), three molecular clouds of gas and interstellar dust rise up: gravity has shaped them into three columns, christened the Pillars of Creation.
The name comes from the star formation going on in the densest regions, where protostars are born — the stage at which the molecular cloud collapses and a star is about to ignite, still on the pre-main sequence.
The Eagle Nebula lies in Serpens and is an active star-forming region: inside it the open cluster NGC 6611 gathers young, very hot stars born from the cloud itself.
The pillars are not stable structures: they are what remains of a much larger cloud, eroded by ultraviolet radiation from nearby stars. The densest tips last longer and shield what lies behind them, giving the columns their tapered shape. Inside those tips, more stars are forming. It is a process that devours itself: the very light that carves the pillars will eventually disperse them.
The photograph shows the whole nebula and, at its centre, the three pillars standing out against the blue of ionized oxygen. Far more famous are the Hubble images of 1995 and the more recent James Webb ones of 2022: they are worth a look.
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