Pillars of Creation

Pillars of Creation ( in German: Pillars of Creation ) is the name of a formation that was photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in about 7000 light years distant Eagle Nebula. The picture was taken on 1 April 1995, the responsible astronomers were Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen of Arizona State University.

Naming & Information about the picture

The name on the one hand describes the columnar structure and other hand, refers to the formation of stars within the formation.

The overall picture was assembled from 32 individual shots that were taken from four separate cameras of the Hubble telescope. The false colors in the image are based on the molecular composition of the structures; as is shown in green as hydrogen, ( monovalent ) and sulfur red ( divalent ) oxygen blue.

In the upper right corner of the picture a piece of the recording is missing. The reason for this is that one of the four recording cameras worked in a different resolution level than the other three to make it visible minor details in their image area. The the image area corresponding recordings of this camera have been scaled to fit to the other images.

Formation of new stars

The "pillars" extend 4 light-years into space and consist of interstellar matter. They slowly erode by photoevaporation, be at their peak of molecular hydrogen and dust existing "bubbles" (English: bubbles) exposed, in which form protostars.

Possible destruction

A research group led by Nicolas Flagey from the Institut d' Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, near Paris, made ​​in 2007 with the Spitzer Space Telescope infrared images of the Pillars of Creation. Here, a cloud of hot gas and dust was observed in the region, the cause could have been a supernova about 6,000 years ago. The shock wave of the supernova has the Pillars of Creation as possible already been destroyed, due to the distance of 7000 light years, the destruction of which would, however, be seen only in about 1000 years on Earth.

The astrophysicist Stephen Reynolds of North Carolina State University questioned this interpretation, according to Reynolds a much stronger emission of radio waves and X-rays should be observed in a supernova. In an interview with New Scientist Reynolds suggested as an alternative explanation to a heating of the dust by the stellar wind of massive stars, which would cause a substantial slower erosion of the formation.

Herschel space telescope

2011 Pillars of Creation were again observed by the Herschel space telescope.