About 6,500 light years away, an epic race is nearing its end.
This ground-based wide-angle view of the Eagle Nebula shows the star-forming region in all its glory, with new stars, the blue glow of reflected starlight, and the red glow of anything ionized. Dusty, light-blocking features are also prominent. The reddish glow on the gaseous outskirts is due to the recombination of hydrogen atoms and a photon of exactly 656.3 nanometers that is emitted whenever an electron transitions from the n=3 to the n=2 energy state.
In the Eagle Nebula, the last remnants of neutral gas evaporate.
A large portion of the Eagle Nebula, with four of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope images superimposed over the relevant region of the larger nebula. While these features, highlighted by the central Pillars of Creation, are incredibly interesting due to the neutral matter still present, most of the Nebula is an empty, cavernous void dotted with isolated stars and star clusters.
Situated in the plane of the Milky Way, new stars are formed when cold gas collapses.
The dense cores of protostar cluster G333.23–0.06, as identified by ALMA, show strong evidence for high levels of multiplicity within these cores. Binary cores are common, and groups of multiple binary stars, forming quaternary systems, are also quite common. Triplet and quintuplet systems are also found within these massive clumps, while singlet stars appear to be quite rare for these clumps. Stars forming in nebulae throughout the Universe, including the Eagle Nebula, are expected to have similar clumpy properties.
This collapse leads to fragmentation and ultimately the formation of new galaxies.
Chandra’s unique ability to distinguish and locate X-ray sources allowed the identification of hundreds of very young stars, and stars still in the process of forming (known as “protostars”). Infrared observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory indicate that 219 of the Eagle Nebula’s X-ray sources are young stars surrounded by disks of dust and gas, and 964 are young stars without these disks: together, more than 1,000 new stars and protostars have been found. And no, there was no evidence of recent supernovae or supernova remnants discovered; the Pillars are not in the process of being destroyed.
However, young stars are hot and violent: they emit enormous amounts of ultraviolet radiation.
Over the course of 27 years, our view of the Pillars of Creation has expanded not only in size and resolution, but also in terms of wavelength coverage. The longer wavelengths of light, as revealed in unprecedented resolution by JWST, allow us to see features that could never be illuminated by an optical telescope, even in space, on their own. We can also see, although the effect is subtle, that the Pillars are slowly evaporating, and that they will be completely gone after about 100,000 years.
These photons ionize atoms, transforming them into plasma and boiling them away.
This Herschel image of the Eagle Nebula shows the heat-based emission from the nebula’s intensely cold gas and dust that only far-infrared images can capture. Each color represents a different temperature of the dust, from about 10 degrees above absolute zero (10 Kelvin, or minus 442 degrees Fahrenheit) for the red, to about 40 Kelvin, or minus 388 degrees Fahrenheit, for the blue. The Pillars of Creation, visible just below and left of center, are among the hottest parts of the nebula as revealed by these wavelengths.
Once a vast cloud of gas, most of the Eagle Nebula is now cavernous.
Using Chandra, researchers discovered more than 1,700 X-ray sources in the Eagle Nebula field. Two-thirds of these sources are likely young stars in the Nebula, and some of them can be seen in this small field of view around the Pillars of Creation. Although most of the sources do not come from the pillars themselves, the ‘eye’ of the largest pillar corresponds to a protostar about five times the mass of the Sun. The pillars themselves represent some of the last gas reserves in the nebula’s interior that have not yet completely evaporated by photoevaporation.
Huge, newborn galaxies dominate the interior, leaving few scattered pockets of gas.
This three-panel view of the central pillar in the Pillars of Creation shows how our views of it have evolved from Hubble’s 1995 image, to Hubble’s 2014 image, through JWST’s 2022 image. The level of detail seen in the dust composition of the pillar is particularly striking, as are the background stars revealed by JWST, which are completely invisible to Hubble’s eyes. The color differences between the first two and the third panels, near the top of the pillar, provide evidence of energy transport within the pillar itself.
Three towering pillars still stand, some of which are 4-5 light years high: the Pillars of Creation.
On the left is the iconic image of the Pillars of Creation as seen by Hubble. As of 2022, JWST (right) has also looked at the pillars, revealing details such as newly formed stars, faint protostars, and cool gas invisible even to Hubble’s impressive capabilities.
Observations from 1995 to the present show that the pillars are slowly shrinking: evaporating due to external radiation.
By rotating and stretching Hubble’s two iconic, high-resolution images of the top of the tallest pillar relative to each other, the changes from 1995 to 2015 can be superimposed. Contrary to many expectations, the evaporation process is slow and small, indicating that the pillars will persist for about 100,000 years or more.
X-rays and infrared light reveal the presence of young, newly formed stars within.
This infrared view of the Pillars of Creation from ESO’s Very Large Telescope, an 8.2-metre ground-based telescope, peers largely through the dust of the Pillars of Creation to reveal the stars forming within. The JWST views are in similar wavelengths, but are much higher-resolution, more detailed, and cover a much wider range of wavelengths.
With no evidence of a recent supernova, these structures face a losing endgame.
This colorful view of the Pillars of Creation uses a large set of JWST data, revealing the tenuous and transient nature of these neutral gas features.
Internal and external radiation will boil away the last gas reserves after ~100,000 years.
This infrared, multichannel composite view from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, taken in 2007, shows the “Pillars of Creation” on the right and the “Spire” or “Fairy” on the left, similar to the iconic features Hubble revealed in optical wavelengths. JWST has yet to image the Fairy, but its dense central core of gas may outlast the neutral matter in the pillars.
The heaviest, most massive clumps will become full-fledged stars.
This small region of the Orion Nebula, captured by JWST’s NIRCam imager, shows not only stars and gas and dust, but also planet-mass objects, five of which, surprisingly, are found in binary pairs. These are known as JuMBOs (Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects) and make up about 9% of all planet-mass objects found in the Orion Nebula. Even though the Pillars of Creation are about five times farther away, similar physics and similar objects should be present and playing a role.
‘Failed stars’ such as brown dwarfs and Jupiter-like worlds also arise in large numbers.
This 3D visualization of the location and properties of the feature that appears as the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula is actually composed of at least four distinct, disconnected components located on either side of a rich star cluster: NGC 6611. Neutral matter absorbs and reflects starlight, resulting in a unique appearance at optical wavelengths and spectacular sights when viewed in infrared by JWST.
Only 5-10% of the original gas becomes stars; the rest return to interstellar space.
Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals and no more than 200 words.