Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Serpens (Ser)  ·  Contains:  Eagle Nebula  ·  HD168075  ·  HD168076  ·  HD168137  ·  IC 4703  ·  LBN 67  ·  M 16  ·  NGC 6611  ·  Star Queen  ·  Star Queen nebula
Pillars of Creation, Stefano Zamblera
Pillars of Creation, Stefano Zamblera

Pillars of Creation

Pillars of Creation, Stefano Zamblera
Pillars of Creation, Stefano Zamblera

Pillars of Creation

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The name “Pillars of Creation” explains the gas and dust disposed in pillars clouds which are in the process of creating new stars, while also being eroded by the light from nearby stars that have recently formed, and it was given after the Hubble picture taken on April 1, 1995.Astronomers responsible for the photo were Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen from Arizona State University. According to DeVorkin and Smith, 2015 [Devorkin, David H.; Smith, Robert W., 2015 “The Hubble Cosmos: 25 Years of New Vistas in Space.” National Geographic Society: 67 this name is based on a phrase used by Charles Spurgeon in his 1857 sermon “The Condescension of Christ”: by calling the Hubble’s spectacular image of the Eagle Nebula the Pillars of Creation, NASA scientists were tapping a rich symbolic tradition with centuries of meaning, bringing it into the modern age. As much as we associate pillars with the classical temples of Greece and Rome, the concept of the pillars of creation – the very foundations that hold up the world and all that is in it – reverberates significantly in the Christian tradition. When William Jennings Bryan published The World’s Famous Orations in 1906, he included an 1857 sermon by London pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon titled “The Condescension of Christ”. In it, Spurgeon uses the phrase to convey not only the physical world but also the force that keeps it all together, emanating from the divine: “And now wonder, ye angels,” Spurgeon says of the birth of Christ, “the Infinite has become an infant; he, upon whose shoulders the universe doth hang, hangs at his mother’s breast; He who created all things, and bears up the pillars of creation, hath now become so weak, that He must be carried by a woman!”According to Bally et. Al., the pillars are composed of cool molecular hydrogen and dust that are being eroded by photoevaporation from the ultraviolet light of relatively close and hot stars. The leftmost pillar is about four light years in length. The finger-like protrusions at the top of the clouds are larger than the Solar System, and are made visible by the shadows of evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs), which shield the gas behind them from intense UV flux.[10] EGGs are themselves incubators of new stars.The stars then emerge from the EGGs, which then are evaporated.Cfr.: Bally, J.; Morse, J.; Reipurth, B. (1996). “The Birth of Stars: Herbig-Haro Jets, Accretion and Proto-Planetary Disks”. In Benvenuti, Piero; Macchetto, F.D.; Schreier, Ethan J. (eds.). Science with the Hubble Space Telescope – II. Proceedings of a workshop held in Paris, France, December 4–8, 1995. Space Telescope Science Institute. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1996swhs.conf..491B/abstract [18/07/2023]

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