The Pillars of Creation!
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
Quick Stats
Name: Pillars of Creation
Nickname: NA
Distance: 6,500-7,000 light-years
Constellation: Serpens (Northern Celestial Hemisphere)
The Pillars of Creation are a small part of a much larger nebula, M16, also known as the Eagle Nebula. This nebula is located between 6,500-7,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens, making it a Northern Celestial Hemisphere object. This iconic image was first taken in 1995 and colorized by Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen from Arizona State University. My version of the iconic 1995 image is below! Before this image was released, it wasn't such a popular thing to make beautiful images with astronomical data and release it to the public. But this image changed all of that and now it is common to share images like this and to inform the general public about what is going on in space!
The Pillars of Creation, 1995 edition.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
The region was then photographed again in 2014 with a newer camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. This is the image shown at the top of this article! It is such an amazing image to work with and I was so excited to get to process this data when I first learned how to create these images!
The Pillars of Creation are very aptly named- they are an area in the nebula where new stars are being created. The pillars are made up of molecular hydrogen. Molecular hydrogen is just a fancy word for hydrogen that has bonded with another hydrogen atom, essentially creating a hydrogen molecule! It is designated as H2. Inside this cloud of molecular hydrogen are stars just beginning their lives. The stars inside these pillars are hot, young stars that are eroding away this hydrogen gas by emitting very energetic light. This process is known as photoevaporation. Photoevaporation is the process where energetic radiation, in this case from these young stars, ionizes the surrounding gas and causes it to blow away from the young star. Ionization simply means that an atom has lost an electron and therefore gains an electrical charge (normally an atom with all electrons has a net charge of zero).
The tallest pillar on the far left of the image is four light-years across. The protrusions at the top of the pillar are larger than our own Solar System! Our Solar System is 1.5 light-years across. These protrusions look so tiny yet, it’s incredible that they are actually so large! They are visible due to evaporating gaseous globules, also known as EGGs. An EGG is a region of hydrogen gas that is denser than the surrounding gas and can shade objects from ionizing ultraviolet radiation. Because UV radiation wants to blast away the surrounding gas, by being shielded, this can allow for star formation to occur. These protrusions are resisting some of the intense radiation and haven't blown away just yet.
This image was a fun one to create! When I first created this image, I had no idea what I was really looking at. I was very new to processing images from the Hubble Space Telescope and I just saw a beautiful, iconic picture and processed it. I was pretty pleased with my original image, which is shown below. Upon my second processing of this image (the one at the top of this article), I noticed so many cool new features that are indicative of star formation. While that may seem obvious as this is what the pillars are known for, it was cool to be able to recognize these smaller structures in the image as I was processing it. Close-ups of some of these areas can be viewed here, here, here, and here!
The Pillars of Creation! This was my first process of this image.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
Hubble also captured the Pillars in infrared! Infrared wavelengths of light allow us to peer through the thick dust and gas that obscures visible light. With this infrared image, so many more stars are visible and there is a glimpse of what is going on in these clouds of dust and gas as stars form. Check out the image below!
The Pillars of Creation as viewed in infrared wavelengths of light!
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
Below is a comparison of the Pillars of Creation in visible light wavelengths and infrared wavelengths of light. The visible light image is on the left and the infrared image is on the right. It is amazing what we can see with infrared wavelengths of light and how those wavelengths can pierce through the obscuring dust and gas in this nebula!
A comparison of the Pillars of Creation in visible light and infrared wavelengths of light!
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
Because Hubble is funded by the US government, the data is free to the public, since we pay for it! This image is such a stunning image and I want everyone to be able to download and use this data! Below are links to resources so you can process your own image! Questions? Email me at peculiargalexyastro@gmail.com or reach out to me here!
RESOURCES
This image was taken over multiple days by the Hubble Space Telescope. Those days were September 2, 2014, September 3, 2014, and September 5, 2014. It was an image created using three greyscale images assigned to the RGB channels in Photoshop CC. The images used were:
RED: hlsp_heritage_hst_wfc3-uvis_m16_f673n
GREEN: hlsp_heritage_hst_wfc3-uvis_m16_f657n
BLUE: hlsp_heritage_hst_wfc3-uvis_m16_f502n
Interested in learning how to process your own image? Check out the tutorial here!
Complete mosaics can be found here as well as more information about how the Hubble Heritage team created this image! New HST Multi-Wavelength Imaging of the Eagle Nebula M16.
These images are associated with HST Proposal 13926.
REFERENCES- ALL INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE WAS TAKEN FROM THE SITES BELOW
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