Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Serpens (Ser)  ·  Contains:  Eagle Nebula  ·  HD168075  ·  HD168076  ·  HD168097  ·  HD168137  ·  IC 4703  ·  LBN 67  ·  M 16  ·  NGC 6611  ·  Sh2-49  ·  Star Queen  ·  Star Queen nebula
M16 The Eagle Nebula, astrovienna
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M16 The Eagle Nebula

M16 The Eagle Nebula, astrovienna
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M16 The Eagle Nebula

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Description

The Eagle Nebula is part of a large emission nebula complex located 5700 light years away. The cluster associated with the nebula has approximately 8100 stars, which are mostly concentrated in the bright clearing in the northwest (upper right) area of the nebula. The dust columns at the center of the image gained fame as “The Pillars of Creation,” an iconic image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, which was recreated in 2014 to mark Hubble’s 25th anniversary. The column at upper left is 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers long, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star. It was dubbed “The Fairy” by the editors of NASA’s Astronomy Photo of the Day, which published a high-resolution Hubble picture of the spire in 2007.

This is a tricolor narrowband image in a standard Hubble palette (SII:HaIII mapped to R:G:B) with a turquoise-gold color shift. The nebula never gets more than 37 degrees above the horizon from my location, so I was surprised at the amount of detail captured in the image.

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M16 The Eagle Nebula, astrovienna