Ever since I laid eyes on "The Pillars of Creation" taken by NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope it has been a dream of mine to recreate that image. Captured on April 1st 1995 (and subsequently processed) by NASA, Jeff Hester, and Paul Scowen, this photo captured my imagination and was one of the main reasons I became interested in astronomy. I have since realized that there is no competing with Hubble but I wanted to give it my best effort
The Pillars are approximately 7,000 light years away and composed of Hydrogen and various dust particles. Interestingly the Spitzer Space Telescope recently uncovered a large cloud of hot, highly energized dust in the same vicinity as the Pillars which is theorized to be caused by a giant supernova. It is estimated that such a supernova would have occurred 7,000 - 8,000 years ago and collided with the Pillars ~1,000 years later. Thus the Pillars were quite possibly wiped out between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago. Other astronomers have disputed this theory claiming that there is additional evidence lacking which would help to confirm a supernova was responsible for the cloud discovered. Astronomers are currently searching ancient records for evidence of the culprit (the light from the supernova would have reached Earth up to ~1,000 years ago). We should know sometime in the next 1,000 years but as a precaution I'm going to try and image this one as much as I can going forward!
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