M16 The Eagle Nebula
Hubble originally observed M16 in 1995, and the image became an overnight sensation. It was the first highly detailed look astronomers ever got into a star-forming region.
In the centre of the image is the famous Pillars of Creation, where new stars are being born inside the dark clouds. It is formed by nearby stars radiating a stupendous amount of UV light upon the interstellar medium. The radiation washes over the dust clouds, eroding away the lower-density materials and carving the three distinct towers.
The nebula is going through constant changes on a massive scale. The interstellar gases move at a speed of over 700,000,000 metres per hour. That's enough to get you to the moon in 30min. Since the first image of the nebula, some of the dust streams have travelled trillions of kilometres. In fact, there's an image on NASA's website showing exactly how far the dust has travelled over the past 26 years, but in this image, the change is less than half a pixel. How immense the universe and how short-lived our species!
A great in-depth exploration of the Pillars of Creation' by Dr Frank Summers:
https://youtu.be/JqZ2xtsJRGc(The raw data was from remote observations on Telescopelive, which I processed using Pixinsight and Photoshop)
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