The Eagle Nebula and its colors are in the photo highlighted by NASA today on the website Astronomy Picture of the Day this Monday (15). It is about seven thousand light-years from us, and has an opening that is like a window, which allows you to observe the inside of a “factory” of stars.
Cataloged as M16, the Eagle Nebula spans about 20 light-years and can be seen with binoculars towards the constellation Serpens, the Serpent. Below, you can see the nebula photographed over different exposures:
As you peer through the cavity, you find a bright region formed by a young star cluster. There, there are stars in formation among pillars and globules of dust that, together with the molecular gas, will give rise to others.
In the picture, there are some young, bluish stars visible, whose light and winds are pushing away the filaments of dust and gas that are left. The colors already indicate some of the elements present there: sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen appear in yellow, red and blue, respectively.
The Eagle Nebula
As you saw in the picture, the Eagle Nebula is an impressive object. It was discovered in 1745 by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux, and has an apparent magnitude of 6; if you have a large telescope on hand and favorable conditions, such as low light pollution, you may be able to observe a very famous structure of it.
The nebula is home to the Pillars of Creation, a star-forming region well known thanks to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Pillars of gas and dust receive ultraviolet light from nearby young stars, which slowly erodes their structure.
Also, M16 is home to several other star-forming regions and more structures, such as emission nebulae, capable of emitting their own light. They are accompanied by dark nebulae, so dense that they block light coming from objects in the background.
Source: ETC
