Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Pillars of Eagle Castle

NASA ^ | July 14, 2013 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: What lights up this castle of star formation? The familiar Eagle Nebula glows bright in many colors at once. The above 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.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit & Copyright: Emanuele Colognato & Jim Wood]

[SunkenCiv]

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[The Cajun]

Now that is flat out awesome and flat out eerie.

[onyx]

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

[onyx]

I’ll say!

[The Cajun]

Looks like something bad going on in Greek or Nordic mythology, LOL!

[onyx]

Yes! You’re right.
I find it almost mesmerizing.

[NYer]

Love, love, love this image! Thank you .. it is now the desktop image on my mac.

[chesty_puller]

Amazing.