NASA's 20-Year-Old 'Pillars Of Creation' Photo Undergoes A Stunning High-Def Treatment
(CBS SF) -- NASA is celebrating 25 years of the Hubble Telescope in orbit with a new dramatic view of a well-known celestial object.
Taken at 6,500 light-years away, a refined image of the the Eagle Nebula, or M16, is being unveiled at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle this week.
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The iconic 1995 image, dubbed "Pillars of Creation," is the most dramatic nearby example of how star birth takes places across the universe.
A high-definition treatment of the image is providing astronomers with a sharper and wider view of the three giant columns of cold gas bathed in scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young, massive stars. It's even generated new perspective that may more accurately describe this region of the Eagle Nebula as "Pillars of Destruction."
"They are actively being ablated away before our very eyes," said Paul Scowen of Arizona State University in Tempe. "The ghostly bluish haze around the dense edges of the pillars is material getting heated up and evaporating away into space. We have caught these pillars at a very unique and short-lived moment in their evolution. Scowen and astronomer Jeff Hester, formerly of Arizona State University, led the original Hubble observations of the Eagle Nebula.
By comparing the 1995 and 2014 pictures, astronomers also noticed a lengthening of a narrow jet-like feature that may have been ejected from a newly forming star.
Over the last 19 years, this jet has stretched farther into space, across an additional 60 billion miles, at an estimated speed of about 450,000 miles per hour. It supports the theory that our sun probably formed in a similar turbulent star-forming region.