THE PILLARS OF CREATION - EAGLE NEBULA - SERPENS CONSTELLATION

The name "Pillars of Creation" refers to a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of columns of interstellar gas and dust visible in the Eagle Nebula; it was taken on April 1, 1995 and is regarded as one of the ten best photographs taken by Hubble.
Its dark areas are thought to be associated with protostars or young stellar objects.
The Pillars are three very dense structures of gas and dust located in the southeastern edge of the nebula, and were created by the action of the stellar wind of the giant stars of the central open cluster. Their cataloging follows the increasing Roman numbering, so the individual structures are called Column I, Column II and Column III, proceeding from northeast to southwest. The morphology and ionized structure is well known thanks to the advent of space telescopes. The ionizing radiation coming from the stars of the cluster compresses the gases of the molecular clouds causing them to increase the pressure on the surface, while a flow of ionized material is generated in the opposite part to the source of the stellar wind, this is the phenomenon responsible for the "pillar" structure of the clouds.
The end parts of Columns I and II contain young stellar objects, identified for the first time through infrared mapping. Among the brightest objects is YSO M16 ES − 1, a very red and rather bright source located in Column I and inside it there would be, according to some studies, a pre-main sequence star or a small group of them, or even a single protostar in the earliest stage of its evolution.
A strong polarized emission radiates from the north and south extremes of the cloud, originating from the jet expulsions of the central object, while between the two lobes from which the emissions come out, the polarization intensity is very low, a sign that the object central might be surrounded by a disc structure.
At the tip of Column II is YSO M16 ES − 2, sometimes called YSO2 in some specific publications; less luminous than the previous one and less obscured, it has a mass between 2 and 5 solar masses.