Astronomy Picture for Today

nasa ^ | 01/23/2006 | DG

[HOTTIEBOY]

The Fairy of Eagle Nebula
Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA), ESA, NASA

Explanation: The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts. Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation much hotter than common fire. The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giant evaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filled with a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars. The above image in scientifically re-assigned colors was released as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

[HOTTIEBOY]

Looks small, huh? The thing spans 10 light years, or 60 TRILLION miles.

[countorlock]

WOW!

[randog]

That's a lot of dust.

[HOTTIEBOY]

PING

[Gay State Conservative]

George Soros and his ilk can look at this and *swear* that
there's no God.

[toomanygrasshoppers]

Fantastic!

[Peleliu1944]

60 trillion miles....

My mind can't begin to comprehend...

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

BTTT

[hattend]

There is a similar picture like this only of 7 or 8 of these dust columns. Or perhaps it's a star "nursery"?

Anybody remember that picture? I used to have a link but I lost it when I got a new computer.

Is this picture just a "zoom in" of that area or is there another similar area. Who can point me to that picture which I consider the coolest picture ever taken by the Hubble.

[HOTTIEBOY]

This is the whole nebula. Think I know which picture you are talking about. The Horsehead.

[HOTTIEBOY]

This One??

[hattend]

The Horsehead nebula is cool but I found the one I was thinking of.

http://www.astrographics.com/cgi-bin/ase/ase.cgi?affiliate=&mode=display&gallery=1&type=favorite&color=&keywords=&page=1

It's in the Eagle Nebula and the pic above is a cropped image...the whole thing is awesome!

[hattend]

For some reason your link won't load on my computer at work. I went to that site looking for the pic but "Cannot Find Server"

Is it similar to the one I linked above?

[HOTTIEBOY]

OK.
Yeah, they call the picture "The Pillars of Creation"

[HOTTIEBOY]

HMMMM...

The nasa link works fine from here...

Your link is the whole Eagle Nebula.

[Godebert]

Same one.

[hattend]

Awesome! It would be cool to fly among those pillars but could you see them if you're going faster than light? :-)

[HOTTIEBOY]

Would be cool. But if you were that close to them, they would be so large that they would not be recognizable as individual features.

[hattend]

Yeah, I keep forgetting the scale of these things.

"Aye Captain, it's another one of those boring dust clouds that tend to clog the deflector"