An X-ray look at the famous Pillars of Creation reveals a region
peppered by bright young stars
An X-ray look at the famous Pillars of Creation reveals a
region peppered by bright young stars.
This image, a composite of data from the Hubble Space Telescope
and Chandra X-Ray Observatory, shows many bright X-ray sources – most of which
are young stars – as red, green and blue objects spread around the Pillars
of Creation in the Eagle
Nebula.
Red objects depict sources of low energy X-rays, while green
and blue hues suggest medium and high-energy objects, respectively. Few such
X-ray sources are found within the pillars themselves, which astronomers
believe may be a sign that the region is past its star-forming prime.
There are, however, two objects near the tips of the
pillars. They include a star between four and five times the mass of the Sun – a blue source near the tip of the
leftmost pillar – and a lower mass star too faint to be visible in this image.
The Eagle Nebula, also known as M16, sits some 7,000
light-years from Earth towards the constellation
Serpens (The Serpent).
-- SPACE.com Staff
Credit: X-ray:
NASA/CXC/U.Colorado/Linsky et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/ASU/J.Hester &
P.Scowen.
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