M16 otherwise known as the Eagle Nebula is about 7,000 light years distance from earth.
The Hubble Space Telescope obtained the famous photograph of this nebula, known as the "Pillars of Creation." You probably have seen it.
The dark tower of gas coming off the nebula, at center, is approximately 57 trillion miles high. This is not quite Hubble quality here, but the dark pillars can clearly be seen at the center of the image above.
Here below I enlarged the central region of the nebula where the "pillars of creation" that were made famous by the Hubble images.
This image was obtained with a Canon 40D, Astronomk LP filters, 6.3 focal reducer riding on a 10"SC telescope--45 images were shot RAW at 2.5 min exposures, then combined, calibrated and stacked using DSS.