Eagle Nebula contains hydrogen and microscopic dust particles, the raw materials for building new stars. The Eagle gets its name because to some The Nebula resembles the bird of prey with outstretched wings and talons bared. The Nebula is two million years old, the EGGs will live for another 1020,000 years.
Eagle Nebula contains hydrogen and microscopic dust particles, the raw materials for building new stars. The Eagle gets its name because to some The Nebula resembles the bird of prey with outstretched wings and talons bared. The Nebula is two million years old, the EGGs will live for another 1020,000 years.
Eagle Nebula contains hydrogen and microscopic dust particles, the raw materials for building new stars. The Eagle gets its name because to some The Nebula resembles the bird of prey with outstretched wings and talons bared. The Nebula is two million years old, the EGGs will live for another 1020,000 years.
The three columns of dust and gas Nebula: a cloud of interstellar gas and in this Hubble Space Telescope image dust, seen either as a luminous patch or are located in the Eagle Nebula. light or a dark hole in a bright The Nebula contains hydrogen and SPACE background. The term was coined to TELESCOPE microscopic dust particles, the raw SCIENCE european space agency describe objects that appeared fuzzy materials for building new stars. INSTITUTE Operated for NASA by AURA when viewed through early telescopes. The Eagle gets its name because to some the Nebula resembles the Nuclear Fusion: two or more light bird of prey with outstretched wings nuclei join together to form a heavier and talons bared. nucleus, releasing energy in the process. Photoevaporation: a process where Uncovering New Stars intense light from hot stars eats away the Off the top of this picture, there are surface of dense clouds. young, hot, massive stars that shine Light Year: the distance light travels very brightly. The stars’ powerful in a year (6 × 1012 or 5 trillion 900 radiation heats the surrounding gas, billion miles) making it glow. This intense radiation is responsible for sculpting the columns; it erodes more tenuous Fast Facts gas in the columns through Age a process called photoevaporation. The Eagle Nebula is two million years The erosion reveals denser gas old, the EGGs will live for another 10- globules surrounding newly formed 20,000 years. stars (see close-up, right). Scientists Location call them “Evaporating Gaseous In the constellation Serpens, the Serpent, Globules” or EGGs. alongside the southern Milky Way Star Birth Distance from Earth Stars are born when clouds of dust 7,000 light years and gas collapse because of gravity. Size As more and more material falls onto Our Solar System would fit comfortably the forming star, it finally becomes inside an EGG. The right column is hot and dense enough at its center to about one light year from top to bottom. trigger the nuclear fusion reactions that make stars, including our Sun, shine. Photoevaporation in the Eagle Electronic Addresses Nebula has cut newly forming stars You can get images and other information about the Hubble Space Telescope using the Internet. off from the cloud feeding them. About the Image While some of the EGGs are large The Eagle Nebula was photographed by Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen of Arizona Using the World Wide Web enough to eventually become stars, (Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, State University using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on board NASA’s and other browsers), use URL others may never make it. Hubble Space Telescope on April 1, 1995. The color picture is made up of three http://oposite.stsci.edu/public.html separate color images: red shows light from sulfur atoms in the cool gas at the edge and follow links from there. of the clouds, blue shows light from ionized oxygen atoms in the hot, evaporated halos, and green shows light from hydrogen atoms. Using ftp, connect to ftp.stsci.edu and find files and directories in /pubinfo.