Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Serpens (Ser)  ·  Contains:  Eagle Nebula  ·  IC 4703  ·  M 16  ·  NGC 6605  ·  NGC 6611  ·  Star Queen
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M16 - Eagle Nebula, Darius Kopriva
M16 - Eagle Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

M16 - Eagle Nebula

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M16 - Eagle Nebula, Darius Kopriva
M16 - Eagle Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

M16 - Eagle Nebula

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745–46. Both the "Eagle" and the "Star Queen" refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula, an area made famous as the "Pillars of Creation" imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned Pillars of Creation. The Eagle Nebula lies in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way.

The Eagle Nebula is part of a diffuse emission nebula, or H II region, which is catalogued as IC 4703. This region of active current star formation is about 5700 light-years distant. A spire of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula in the northeastern part is approximately 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers long.

The cluster associated with the nebula has approximately 8100 stars, which are mostly concentrated in a gap in the molecular cloud to the north-west of the Pillars.

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

M16 - Eagle Nebula, Darius Kopriva

In these public groups

Southern Hemisphere Astro