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A wide field view of the Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16, M16, or NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula and The Spire). M16 is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens.
The Eagle Nebula is part of a diffuse emission nebula, or H II region, which is catalogued as IC 4703. This region of active current star formation is about 7000 light-years distant. A spire of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula in the north-eastern part is approximately 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers long.
Both the "Eagle" and the "Star Queen" refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula, an area made famous as the "Pillars of Creation" photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the Pillars of Creation.
The cluster associated with the nebula has approximately 8100 stars, which are mostly concentrated in a gap in the molecular cloud to the north-west of the Pillars.
The size, distance and age of the Universe is far beyond human comprehension. The known Universe is estimated to contain over One Billion Trillion stars, many with planets just like our star the Sun.
1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
About Emission nebulae:
Emission nebulae are glowing clouds of interstellar gas which have been excited by some nearby energy source, usually a very hot star. The red light seen in this picture is glowing hydrogen captured in the Hydrogen-Alpha (Hα) Infrared wavelength of light at 656nm.
About this image:
A few short 2 minute ISO 3200 exposures, imaged in the rural dark skies of the Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa.
About the Star Colors:
You will notice that star colors differ from red, orange and yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.
Gear:
GSO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian Reflector Telescope.
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector.
Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter.
Orion StarShoot Autoguider.
Celestron AVX Mount.
QHYCCD PoleMaster.
Celestron StarSense.
Canon 60Da DSLR.
Tech:
Guiding in Open PHD 2.6.1.
Image acquisition in Sequence Generator Pro.
Lights/Subs: 15 x 120 sec. ISO 3200 CFA FIT Files.
Calibration Frames:
30 x Bias
30 x Darks
Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,
and finished in Photoshop.
Astrometry Info:
nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1162963#annotated
RA, Dec center: 274.776611113, -13.6822907764 degrees
Orientation: 1.199205505 deg E of N
Pixel scale: 5.53223893248 arcsec/pixel
Martin
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The Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16 and NGC 6611, is an active star-forming region found in the constellation Serpens Cauda. Its distance is estimated to be 5,700 to 7,000 light-years from Earth.
The nebula is best known for the prominent pillars that appear at its core. These pillars were made famous by Hubble Telescope's iconic image taken in 1995 - "The Pillars of Creation" - which beautifully captured these imposing pillars of star creation. These are three massive columns of cold molecular hydrogen gas and cosmic dust, stretching about 4 to 5 light-years in length.
Not far from the pillars is the Stellar Spire, also known as the "Fairy of the Eagle Nebula." This is another column of cold gas and dust that stands a towering 9.5 light-years high. To provide perspective, this length is more than twice the distance from our sun to its nearest neighboring star.
The stars in the image above were captured using R, G, and B broadband filters. The nebula was captured using Ha, Oiii, and Sii narrowband filters. I rendered this image in the Hubble Palette in which emissions from ionized Sii are mapped to the red channel, emissions from ionized Ha are mapped to the green channel, and emissions from ionized Oiii are mapped to the blue channel.
Date of capture: June 17, 2026
Location: Starfront Remote Observatories, Texas
Bortle Class 1
Capture: 26 x 300sec Sii, Ha, Oiii ; 30 x 60 sec R, G, B
Telescope: Askar 107PHQ
Mount: ZWO AM5N
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro
ZWO 7-position EFW
Filters: Astronomik Narrowband and Broadband
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290MM mini
Guide Scope: William Optics UniGuide 50mm
Calibrated with Darks, Flats and Dark Flats
Capture software: N.I.N.A.
Processed with Pleiades PixInsight, Seti Astro Suite Pro and Photoshop CC
Astronomers used the Hubble Space telescope to revisit one of its most iconic subjects, the so-called "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula (M16). Three towers of gas and dust, standing light-years tall, are giving birth to new stars, buried within their dusty spires.
The pillars became famous after Hubble first imaged them in 1995 using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The features were observed again in late 2014 with that instrument's more advanced replacement, the Wide Field Camera 3. With its higher resolution, the new camera provides a sharper view of the pillars and also presents a wider vista, showing the base of the pillars and more of the region surrounding them.
In addition, the new observations captured a portrait of the pillars in infrared light, as well as in visible light. The longer wavelengths of infrared light pass more easily through the dusty environs, allowing us to see more of the wispy details and the stars normally hidden inside or behind the pillars when viewed in visible light.
By comparing Hubble's original image of the pillars to the new one, astronomers also noticed changes in a jet-like feature shooting away from one of the newborn stars within the pillars. The jet grew 60 billion miles longer in the time between observations, suggesting material in the jet was traveling at a speed of about 450,000 miles per hour.
Such observations of the details and changes in the pillars of the Eagle Nebula, and of observations near and far throughout the universe, have been made possible by Hubble’s viewpoint beyond Earth's atmosphere, by its technical upgrades over the years, and the longevity of its career.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2015/news-2015-01.html
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Features of course the famous 'Pillars of Creation'
Wide shot taken last week: 7 x 600s Ha with the Esprit 100/Atik460/AZEQ6.
Insert is from last year with the C9.25 (Ha,SII,OIII Hubble Palette)
On the evening of October 18, 2025, comet SWAN (C/2025 R2) – comet Lemmon's "little sister" – crossed a stunning star field in the heart of the Milky Way, framed by the iconic Eagle (M16) and Omega (M17) nebulae.
A beautiful yet challenging image to process, given the crowded and nebulous field.
Technical details:
- 88 × 45s @ f/4 – Canon 6D + Nikon 180mm f/2.8 on Star Adventurer (base composition)
- 35 × 120s @ f/4 – ASI 2600MC Duo + Nikon 400mm f/2.8 on AM5 (combined with the previous for the comet stack)
- 30 × 120s @ f/3.5 H-Alpha – Samyang 135mm f/2 + ZWO ASI 2600MM (June 2024, for nebulae boosting)
Total integration: 3h 16m
From my backyard tripod location the Eagle Nebula can only be imaged for about an hour per night 2 months of the year, and even then only from 27 to 33 degrees above the horizon: it's tough! I used 97 of 110 forty-five and 50 sec subs on 6-23, 6-28, 7-3, and 7-5-25 for 80 minutes integration.
Link to full image: (75% size is best)
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5j5v13622ezhucgi8xm83/m16.jpg?rlke...
Equipment
Astrotech AT8IN, Televue Paracorr 2, Orion Atlas Pro Az-Eq G, Orion 50mm Guide Scope, QHY5III678M guide camera, Ogma AP26CC cooled camera
Software
Astro Photography Tool, PHD2, Stellarium, EQMOD, Siril, GraXpert
The full Moon provided plenty of light prior to Sunrise. Enough light to produce a very substantial lens flare when I took out my iPhone 6s Plus to take a photograph of it and the silhouettes of the trees on Gipps Street. On the left, we have an Incense Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) whilst it is a Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) on the right. The cedar is one of my favorites - wonderful richly textured red bark, and the most extraordinary branches. They tend to radiate away from the trunk for a few metres, then make a right angle bend, heading straight up from there.
Thinking of matters astronomical, I was struck when processing this image that the composition shared some similarities with one of the most famous astronomical images, the "Pillars of Creation" image from the Hubble Telescope. The timing of the release of this image, a year or so after the corrective optics were fitted to the telescope, restored the reputation of the telescope for the general public. For years previously, the performance had been well below the specifications and expectation.
The Pillars of Creation image depicts clouds of glowing gas in the Eagle nebula. There are three columns, decreasing in height from left to right. The image was compiled by Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen from Arizona State University in 1995, and it achieved widespread public acclaim. I can remember viewing the image in a Netscape browser (!) out and being in total awe that such structures could exist at galactic scales.
When doing some research on the web for this posting, I became curious how it came to be called the "Pillars of Creation", and discovered that the compilers chose a phrase used by Charles Spurgeon, a British 19th century Baptist preacher, in one of his sermons ...
"And now wonder, ye angels, the Infinite has become an infant; He, upon whose shoulders the universe doth hang, hangs at his mother's breast. He who created all things, and bears up the pillars of creation." (Charles Spurgeon, "The Condescension of Christ, Sermon XXIII).
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation
hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/01/
www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-goes-high-definition-...
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Spurgeon
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calocedrus_decurrens
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinia_pseudoacacia
Barton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
Post-Processing Notes ...
iPhone 6s Plus - Photograph taken with the back-facing camera on an iPhone 6s Plus.
Hipstamatic - Version 311 of this camera replacement app was used to take the photograph (4032 x 3024 pixels). I chose to use the original, unfiltered image.
Handy Photo - Used the Retouch tool to remove two bright spots (i.e., lens artifacts - internal reflections of the bright Moon).
Photoshop Express - Cropped the image to square (1:1) format and output an image with 2936 x 2936 pixels.
Snapseed - Applied overall lighting adjustments. Added a small amount of dark vignette. Applied some of the "Glamour Glow" filter effect
ExifEditor - Transferred the EXIF data from the original photograph to the final image.
Investigator - Located where I made the photograph using the mapping option and added the geographic coordinates to the EXIF data.
A cropped version of Eagle Nebula to isolate the Pillars of Creation. These pillars were made famous by Hubble Telescope's iconic image taken in 1995 which beautifully captured these imposing pillars of star creation. These are three massive columns of cold molecular hydrogen gas and cosmic dust, stretching about 4 to 5 light-years in length.
The stars in the image above were captured using R, G, and B broadband filters. The nebula was captured using Ha, Oiii, and Sii narrowband filters. I rendered this image in the Hubble Palette in which emissions from ionized Sii are mapped to the red channel, emissions from ionized Ha are mapped to the green channel, and emissions from ionized Oiii are mapped to the blue channel.
Date of capture: June 17, 2026
Location: Starfront Remote Observatories, Texas
Bortle Class 1
Capture: 26 x 300sec Sii, Ha, Oiii ; 30 x 60 sec R, G, B
Telescope: Askar 107PHQ
Mount: ZWO AM5N
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro
ZWO 7-position EFW
Filters: Astronomik Narrowband and Broadband
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290MM mini
Guide Scope: William Optics UniGuide 50mm
Calibrated with Darks, Flats and Dark Flats
Capture software: N.I.N.A.
Processed with Pleiades PixInsight, Seti Astro Suite Pro and Photoshop CC
Used Star Tools to process the image and final touches in LightRoom4. Overall I did get some more nebula out of it in comparison to my previous, but it seems to be borderline overcooked. I do like that the yellow and orange stars were enhanced though ;-)
Celestron C8, CGEM-DX mount, Nightscape CCD @ f/6.3, NexGuide autoguider on a piggy-backed 80mm guidescope. 20x300sec exposures, 8 darks, 25 bias frames, no flats.
Gas Pillars in the Eagle Nebula (M16): Pillars of Creation in a Star-Forming Region
Undersea corral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are actually columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that are also incubators for new stars. The pillars protrude from the interior wall of a dark molecular cloud like stalagmites from the floor of a cavern. They are part of the "Eagle Nebula" (also called M16 — the 16th object in Charles Messier's 18th century catalog of "fuzzy" objects that aren't comets), a nearby star-forming region 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens.
The pillars are in some ways akin to buttes in the desert, where basalt and other dense rock have protected a region from erosion, while the surrounding landscape has been worn away over millennia. In this celestial case, it is especially dense clouds of molecular hydrogen gas (two atoms of hydrogen in each molecule) and dust that have survived longer than their surroundings in the face of a flood of ultraviolet light from hot, massive newborn stars (off the top edge of the picture). This process is called "photoevaporation. "This ultraviolet light is also responsible for illuminating the convoluted surfaces of the columns and the ghostly streamers of gas boiling away from their surfaces, producing the dramatic visual effects that highlight the three-dimensional nature of the clouds. The tallest pillar (left) is about about 4 light-years long from base to tip.
As the pillars themselves are slowly eroded away by the ultraviolet light, small globules of even denser gas buried within the pillars are uncovered. These globules have been dubbed "EGGs." EGGs is an acronym for "Evaporating Gaseous Globules," but it is also a word that describes what these objects are. Forming inside at least some of the EGGs are embryonic stars — stars that abruptly stop growing when the EGGs are uncovered and they are separated from the larger reservoir of gas from which they were drawing mass. Eventually, the stars themselves emerge from the EGGs as the EGGs themselves succumb to photoevaporation.
The picture was taken on April 1, 1995 with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The color image is constructed from three separate images taken in the light of emission from different types of atoms. Red shows emission from singly-ionized sulfur atoms. Green shows emission from hydrogen. Blue shows light emitted by doubly- ionized oxygen atoms.
Credit: Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University), and NASA/ESA
I took the newly repaired Skywatcher Esprit120 out for a test tonight. (Last time I used this scope was on November 14th, 2014. I sent it in to get repaired and also got surgery so its been a while. The dew shield was replaced with a new one and now everything is working great!) I didn't bring the autoguider out because my plan was to mainly image Saturn tonight. Spent a considerable amount of time on Saturn then quickly took this image to test the optics. I was surprised how well this stack turned out considering how rushed this was. Had to keep the exposure times low because no autoguider. The target was very low in the sky and there was a rising moon too. I removed the LP filter out of the corrector/flattener to see the difference, (previously I was using an Antares LP filter and there were these little blue reflections around the brighter stars).. Result I think it the scope performs beautifully. I hope I can take this scope to dark skies sometime.
M16 Eagle Nebula
22 x 45seconds (lights + darks) (unguided)
iso 1600
Canon 500d(modified)
Skywatcher Esprit120
Neq6
Preprocessed in Nebulosity, stacked in DSS, processed in Pixinsight.
Location: Vanouver, BC
Temperature: 17°C
Light Pollution/Bortle Scale: 7-8
The Heart of the Eagle nebula.
Combined image of the Pillars and the Star Queen.
Using the Hubble palette, plus Hb filter
C14 edge working at F7.8
EQ8 mount
Atik414 camera
Baader filters
Total exposure 10hrs 30m
Artemis capture
Nebulosity
Topaz Gigapixel - AI.sharpen
Photoshop
Taken from Coral Towers Observatory using an SBIG STL-11000 camera and Takahashi BRC 250 telescope on a Software Bisque PME Mount.
H-alpha filter; 6 hours exposure total (36 x 10 min)
LINK
Other images from this series:
False Colour: www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51630262673/
Mono: www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51630037926/
Negative Mono: www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51630688064/
Edited Webb Space Telescope image of the Eagle Nebula (M16) seen in mid-infrared and colored appropriately for Halloween. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation strikes a chilling tone. Thousands of stars that exist in this region disappear from view — and seemingly endless layers of gas and dust become the centrepiece. The detection of dust by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is extremely important — dust is a major ingredient for star formation. Many stars are actively forming in these dense blue-grey pillars. When knots of gas and dust with sufficient mass form in these regions, they begin to collapse under their own gravitational attraction, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars. Although the stars appear to be missing, they aren’t. Stars typically do not emit much mid-infrared light. Instead, they are easiest to detect in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. In this MIRI view, two types of stars can be identified. The stars at the end of the thick, dusty pillars have recently eroded most of the more distant material surrounding them but they can be seen in mid-infrared light because they are still surrounded by cloaks of dust. In contrast, blue tones indicate stars that are older and have shed most of their gas and dust. Mid-infrared light also details dense regions of gas and dust. The red region toward the top, which forms a delicate V shape, is where the dust is both diffuse and cooler. And although it may seem like the scene clears toward the bottom left of this view, the darkest grey areas are where densest and coolest regions of dust lie. Notice that there are many fewer stars and no background galaxies popping into view. Webb’s mid-infrared data will help researchers determine exactly how much dust is in this region — and what it’s made of. These details will make models of the Pillars of Creation far more precise. Over time, we will begin to understand more clearly how stars form and burst out of these dusty clouds over millions of years. Contrast this view with Webb’s near-infrared light image. MIRI was contributed by ESA and NASA, with the instrument designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona. [Image Description: Semi-opaque layers of blue and grey gas and dust start at the bottom left and rise toward the top right. There are three prominent pillars. The left pillar is the largest and widest. The peaks of the second and third pillars are set off in darker shades of blue outlines. Few red stars appear within the pillars. Some blue and white stars dot the overall scene.]
The Eagle Nebula (M16). This is one of my favourite objects, but it's hard to image because it's so low in the sky and only makes a brief unimpeded appearance. This shoot took place over two nights (I had wanted to do more, but shooting into the worst of London's light pollution just became too frustrating). Maybe I'll add more data next year.
[From Wikipedia]The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula) is a diffuse emission nebula and a young open cluster of stars about 5700 light-years away in the constellation Serpens. Both the "Eagle" and the "Star Queen" refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula, an area made famous as the "Pillars of Creation" imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned Pillars of Creation. The Eagle Nebula lies in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way.
29/06/2025
011 x 300-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -10°C
081 x dark frames
015 x flat frames
100 x bias/offset frames
Binning 1x1
12/07/2025
013 x 300-second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -10°C
081 x dark frames
030 x flat frames
100 x bias/offset frames
Binning 1x1
Total integration time = 2 hours
Captured with APT
Guided with PHD2
Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop
Astrometry assistance from ASTAP
Equipment
Telescope: Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5
Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Mini
Guiding Camera: SVBony SV105 with ZWO USBST4 guider adapter
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI1600MC Pro
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector
Optolong L-Pro Light pollution filter
Out of this world public domain images from NASA. All original images and many more can be found from the NASA Image Library
Curated higher resolutions with digital enhancement without attribution required can be downloaded: www.rawpixel.com/board/418580/nasa
This is a free download under CC Attribution ( CC BY 4.0) Please credit NASA and rawpixel.com.
The "Pillars of Creation" at the heart of the Eagle Nebula, aka M16.
8.5" x 11" lithograph, on standard weight paper.
Description on the verso:
"Undersea coral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? These eerie, dark, pillar-like structures are actually columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and that are incubators for new stars. The pillars protrude from the interior wall of a dark molecular cloud like stalagmites from the floor of a cavern. The structures are part of the Eagle Nebula, a nearby star-forming region 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens.
The pillars are in some ways akin to buttes in the desert, where basalt and other dense rock have protected a region from erosion while the surrounding landscape has been worn away. In this celestial case, especially dense clouds of dust and molecular hydrogen gas (two atoms of hydrogen in each molecule) have survived longer than their surroundings as they are flooded by ultraviolet light from nearby hot, massive newborn stars in an erosive process called photoevaporation. The ultraviolet light is also responsible for illuminating the convoluted surfaces of the pillars and the ghostly streamers of gas boiling away from their surfaces, producing dramatic visual effects that highlight the three-dimensional nature of the clouds. The tallest pillar (left) is about a light-year long from base to tip.
As the pillars are slowly evaporated away by the ultraviolet light, small globules of even denser gas buried within the pillars are uncovered. These globules have been named evaporating gaseous globules – EGGs. The term aptly describes their nature, for forming inside some of the EGGs are embryonic stars, which abruptly stop growing when the EGGs are uncovered and separated from the larger reservoir of gas from which they were drawing mass. Eventually, the newborn stars emerge as EGGs themselves succumb to photoevaporation.
The picture was taken on April 1, 1995. The color image is constructed from three separate images taken in the light of emission from different types of atoms; red shows emission from singly ionized sulfur atoms, green shows from emission from hydrogen, and blue shows light emitted by doubly ionized oxygen atoms."
www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-pillars-of-creation
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12108
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA03096_fig4.jpg
Credit: JPL Photojournal
www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia12108
Credit: JPL website
www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/p1501ay_0.jpg
www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-pillars-of-creation
www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pillars...
Last, but NOT least:
hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/1995/44/351-Image.html
Credit: HUBBLESITE/Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) website
This data was captured by Pete Williamson using The Faulkes Telescope, a 2 metre Ritchie-Chretien telescope. I was given the raw data after attending a remote imaging workshop and I've stacked and processed that data myself.
7 x Red, 9 x Blue, 9 x Green & 6 x H-alpha. Each channel was stacked and stretched, then I blended Blue and H-alpha together into one channel before merging the Red and Green into an RGB image. I then processed the blended image further.
I have been working and re-processing this data for months and I'm not sure I can do much more with it. I found this one very challenging! I was using Deep Sky Stacker for stacking, then Photoshop CS2, Lightroom and Fast Stone Image Viewer
From Wikipedia:
The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula and The Spire) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Chéseaux in 1745–46. Both the "Eagle" and the "Star Queen" refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula,[3][4] an area made famous as the "Pillars of Creation" imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned Pillars of Creation.
The Eagle Nebula (also known as M16 and NGC 6611) is an emission nebula 7000 light years away in the constellation Serpens. The first imaging session in nearly a month because conditions were so bad throughout most of June so it was a huge relief to be out with the scope again. M16 is a tricky target from this location, it is very low in the sky so the telescope was pointing straight into murky London sky glow. Also there is only a very short window of opportunity to capture it as it emerges from behind one copse of trees and disappears behind another. I was hoping to combine these data with old data from this time last year but when I looked at the old images it was obvious that conditions were significantly worse when they were taken so I decided to live with just the 90 minutes of integration time...but that was enough to get reasonable detail. What I love about M16 is the Pillars of Creation in the centre (made famous by the wonderful images captured by the Hubble Telescope). They are a huge star-forming region composed of columns of hydrogen gas and dust.
Information from:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula
018 x 300 second exposures at Unity Gain (139) cooled to -20°C
050 x dark frames
030 x flat frames
100 x bias frames (subtracted from flat frames)
Binning 1x1
Total integration time = 1 hour and 30 minutes
Captured with APT
Guided with PHD2
Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop
Equipment:
Telescope: Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5
Guide Scope: Orion 50mm Mini
Guiding Camera: ZWO ASI120MC
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI1600MC Pro
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector
Light pollution filter
Taken from Coral Towers Observatory using an SBIG STL-11000 camera and Takahashi BRC 250 telescope on a Software Bisque PME Mount.
H-alpha filter; 6 hours exposure total (36 x 10 min)
LINK
Other images from this series:
False Colour: www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51630262673/
Mono: www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51630037926/
Negative Mono: www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51630688064/
Update 2015 Jan 06: Hubble has imaged the whole thing again with its WFC3 camera both in visible and infrared light! It's lovely! hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/01/image/c/
Just for fun. This is arguably Hubble's most famous image. A poll run at Asterisk in tandem with an APOD of the nebula asked readers if they had ever seen the image before and 95% of votes were yes.
Combining the f547m data on the green and blue channels allowed me to make the stars appear white rather than neon magenta. I also applied a good deal of sharpening. Filling the upper right corner with cloned data is tempting, but it's not really that bad if you color the missing data similarly to the surrounding sky. Besides, I'm quite fond of the way the telescope was positioned to fit the pillars into the WFPC2's funny framing.
Red: hst_05773_05_wfpc2_f673n_wf_sci
Green: hst_05773_05_wfpc2_f656n_wf_sci + hst_05773_05_wfpc2_f547m_wf_sci
Blue: hst_05773_05_wfpc2_f502n_wf_sci + hst_05773_05_wfpc2_f547m_wf_sci
North is NOT up. It is 42.2° counter-clockwise from up.
Messier 16, M16, or commonly known as the Eagle Nebula, Ear Nebula and Star Queen. The nebula is most famous for the photo of the Pillars of Creation in the "eagle" area, taken by the Hubble space telescope decades ago. Those pillars can be seen in the photo. This is the area where young stars are supposed to be created. The reason why the region is blue is because the newer stars are cooler than the the older stars and thus are blue.
This particular nebula was one of the celestial objects that I've wanted take a photo of since I was a young teen. I'm happy to have finally taken a photo of it.
My attempt at shooting the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) and the "Pillars of Creation". Two nights of acquisition for a total exposure time of 128 minutes.
The Eagle nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens. It contains a young, hot star cluster which is sculpting and illuminating the surrounding gas and dust. This gas and dust are in the process of creating new stars, while also being eroded by the light from nearby stars that have recently formed. The result is a huge, hollowed-out cavity and pillars, each several light-years long.
Specs:
- Orion 8" f/3.9 Newtonian Reflector
- Celestron AVX
- Orion 80mm short tube refractor + Starshoot Autoguider
- Canon 70D, UHS-C filter, ISO 800, 70s.
- 110 Light, 50 Dark, 50 Bias, 30 Flat
- BYEOS > DSS > LightRoom5
All 16 of my Nebula paintings... oil on canvas ranging in size from 24 x 36 to 36 x 48 inches.... please visit my web page , barbarasheehan.com/works
The Hubble Space Telescope took some fantastic images of the Pillars of Creation, a prominent feature of the Eagle Nebula (M 16). The visible light image has wonderful colors, but not many stars, while the infrared light image has many stars, but not much color. I decided to combine them to get the best of both in a single image.
The images I edited to make this are:
Visible: www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1501a/
Infrared: www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1501b/
Credit (both): NASA, ESA/Hubble
The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745-46. Its name derives from its shape that is thought to resemble an eagle. It contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the famous "Pillars of Creation". - Wiki
Taken on a Ritchey-Chrétien Cassegrain (317/2331mm) with a SBIG ST8 XME CCD with 1x each ofLRVB filters for 300s combined in photoshop and touched up in lightroom.
M16 - the Eagle Nebula, including the Pillars of Creation and the structure known as the Stellar Spire.
Scope: Sharpstar 107PH
Flattener: Sky Rover 0.8
CCD: ZWO ASI 1600MM-pro
Filter wheel: ZWO manual
Ha: 24x300s
R/G/B: 30x120s
Mount: NEQ6-pro
Guiding: PHD2, ZWO OAG and ASI120MM
Total of about 5 hours exposure managed by SGP on one night: Friday 13 July 2018.
Processing in Photoshop, with Ha layer used as luminance.
Processed using data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/Kevin M. Gill
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This region of star formation contains the Pillars of Creation, which was made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope. Chandra detects X-rays from young stars in the region, including one embedded in a pillar. X-rays from Chandra (red and blue); infrared image from Webb (red, green, and blue)
Read more about Chandra's 25th anniversary: chandra.cfa.harvard.edu/photo/2024/25th/
Image credit: Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXO/SAO; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare
Visual Description:
This composite image features a region of star formation known as the Pillars of Creation. Here, tall columns of grey gas and dust emerge from the bottom edge of the image, stretching toward our upper right. Backed by dark orange and pink mist, the cloudy grey columns are surrounded by dozens of soft, glowing, dots in whites, reds, blues, yellows, and purples. These dots are young stars emitting X-ray and infrared light. Churning with turbulent gas and dust, the columns lean to our right with small offshoots pointing in the same direction. The misty glow, colorful stars, and lifelike grey dust formations combine to create an image of yearning cloud creatures at dusk, reaching for something just out of frame.
Now that Loch Ness has passed, my last photo from the foggy night before is inspired by The Pillars of Creation. Part of Eagle Nebula M16, this is 4 light years long. That is 24,000,000,000 miles in size. Creation because this is where stars are born, and die. Back on microscopic earth, a tree grows, gives birth to many things, and dies. And like the pillars, all in the cloud of fog.
A great classic for amateur astronomers. A star formation region with in the center the famous 'pillars of creation' This object is too low on the horizon in my normal observation site but I could move my equipment for the week end to the site of l'observatoire de Haute Provence and it was well worth it!
C11-HD, STXL 11002, Losmandy mount.
9 subs of 600s in Halpha
Edited Spitzer Space Telescope image of the Eagle Nebula (M16) where Hubble took the famous "Pillars of Creation" image a while ago.
Original caption: This majestic view taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells an untold story of life and death in the Eagle nebula, an industrious star-making factory located 7,000 light-years away in the Serpens constellation. The image shows the region's entire network of turbulent clouds and newborn stars in infrared light.
The color green denotes cooler towers and fields of dust, including the three famous space pillars, dubbed the "Pillars of Creation," which were photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995.
But it is the color red that speaks of the drama taking place in this region. Red represents hotter dust thought to have been warmed by the explosion of a massive star about 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Since light from the Eagle nebula takes 7,000 years to reach us, this "supernova" explosion would have appeared as an oddly bright star in our skies about 1,000 to 2,000 years ago.
According to astronomers' estimations, the explosion's blast wave would have spread outward and toppled the three pillars about 6,000 years ago (which means we wouldn't witness the destruction for another 1,000 years or so). The blast wave would have crumbled the mighty towers, exposing newborn stars that were buried inside, and triggering the birth of new ones.
The pillars of the Eagle nebula were originally sculpted by radiation and wind from about 20 or so massive stars hidden from view in the upper left portion of the image. The radiation and wind blew dust away, carving out a hollow cavity (center) and leaving only the densest nuggets of dust and gas (tops of pillars) flanked by columns of lighter dust that lie in shadow (base of pillars). This sculpting process led to the creation of a second generation of stars inside the pillars.
If a star did blow up in this region, it is probably located among the other massive stars in the upper left portion of the image. Its blast wave might have already caused a third generation of stars to spring from the wreckage of the busted pillars.
This image is a composite of infrared light detected by Spitzer's infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer. Blue is 4.5-micron light; green is 8-micron light; and red is 24-micron light.
Journalist Miles O'Brien discusses his favorite Hubble images during the 25th Anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope Awards Ceremony, Friday, April 24, 2015, at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Seen behind O'Brien is the telescope's image of the Eagle Nebula's “Pillars of Creation."
Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
Edited Spitzer Space Telescope image of the Eagle Nebula (M16) where Hubble took the famous "Pillars of Creation" image a while ago. I annotated the location of the "Pillars of Creation" in color.
Original caption: This majestic view taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells an untold story of life and death in the Eagle nebula, an industrious star-making factory located 7,000 light-years away in the Serpens constellation. The image shows the region's entire network of turbulent clouds and newborn stars in infrared light.
The color green denotes cooler towers and fields of dust, including the three famous space pillars, dubbed the "Pillars of Creation," which were photographed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995.
But it is the color red that speaks of the drama taking place in this region. Red represents hotter dust thought to have been warmed by the explosion of a massive star about 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Since light from the Eagle nebula takes 7,000 years to reach us, this "supernova" explosion would have appeared as an oddly bright star in our skies about 1,000 to 2,000 years ago.
According to astronomers' estimations, the explosion's blast wave would have spread outward and toppled the three pillars about 6,000 years ago (which means we wouldn't witness the destruction for another 1,000 years or so). The blast wave would have crumbled the mighty towers, exposing newborn stars that were buried inside, and triggering the birth of new ones.
The pillars of the Eagle nebula were originally sculpted by radiation and wind from about 20 or so massive stars hidden from view in the upper left portion of the image. The radiation and wind blew dust away, carving out a hollow cavity (center) and leaving only the densest nuggets of dust and gas (tops of pillars) flanked by columns of lighter dust that lie in shadow (base of pillars). This sculpting process led to the creation of a second generation of stars inside the pillars.
If a star did blow up in this region, it is probably located among the other massive stars in the upper left portion of the image. Its blast wave might have already caused a third generation of stars to spring from the wreckage of the busted pillars.
This image is a composite of infrared light detected by Spitzer's infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer. Blue is 4.5-micron light; green is 8-micron light; and red is 24-micron light.
I got slightly ahead of myself and took 3 more observations of M16 this morning using Skynet Robotic Telescope Network's 16" PROMPT telescopes in the Chilean Andes.
80 second exposures across rgb filters, combined in CS3.
M6 (The Eagle Nebula) clearly showing The Pillars of Creation. For some sort of scale the left most pillar is about 6 or 7 light years in length.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the famous Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula. This is a version in high definition and released today (5 January 2015). (The original Pillars of Creation image was released in 1995, although it doesn't seem as if it was twenty years ago...)
Original caption: JANUARY 5, 2015: Although NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken many breathtaking images of the universe, one snapshot stands out from the rest: the iconic view of the so-called "Pillars of Creation." The jaw-dropping photo, taken in 1995, revealed never-before-seen details of three giant columns of cold gas bathed in the scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young, massive stars in a small region of the Eagle Nebula, or M16.
Though such butte-like features are common in star-forming regions, the M16 structures are by far the most photogenic and evocative. The Hubble image is so popular that it has appeared in movies and television shows, on tee-shirts and pillows, and even on a postage stamp. And now, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, Hubble has revisited the famous pillars, providing astronomers with a sharper and wider view, shown in the right-hand image. For comparison, the original 1995 Hubble image of the gaseous towers appears in the left-hand view. Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars.
Date: July 4, 2023
Bortle Class 5 backyard, SF Bay Area (East Bay)
Capture: 6 x 300sec Ha, Dithered
Telescope: Askar 107PHQ
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC-Pro OSC
Antlia ALP-T Narrowband
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290MM mini
ZWO OAG-L
Mount: iOptron GEM45
Calibrated with Flats and Dark Flats
ZWO ASIAIR Plus Control and Capture
Processed with DSS and Photoshop CC
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of the Pillars of Creation was acquired using only Near Infrared filters. The processed Flickr image is a small portion of the Eagle Nebula (M16) which is located in the constellation Serpens, the Serpent. The Pillars of Creation are dark columns of dust and hydrogen gas that lie in the central portion of M16. The Pillars of Creation contain star forming cocoons. The pillars are about four light years in height at maximum and roughly 6,000 light years from Earth.
By using Near Infrared (NIR) filters with the NIR sensitive camera of the HST, the resulting image provides a view of the Pillars of Creation in a way that the human eye cannot see since the image is outside the range of the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The NIR portion of the spectrum can penetrate the more of the dust in the clouds revealing the interior structure of the pillars in a way that cannot been seen in photos taken with visible spectrum. The NIR Flickr photo provides an “X-ray-like” image of the pillars that reveals the interior of the clouds that are not available in the photos obtained using visible light. The NIR Flick image of the Pillars of Creation is almost “ghost-like” in comparison to the same subject taken in visible light.
The HST imaging data was extracted from Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). The data was downloaded to my home PC for postprocessing with astrophotography software. All the data taken by the HST was Near Infrared (NIR).
•Two different HST filtered images from MAST were downloaded to my home PC for processing
•The raw image data was available from the NIR wide band filters
•Since three color channels are needed to process the data in the software, the channel assignments were as follows: the red channel was assigned to the longer NIR data image and the blue and green channel were assigned to the same shorter NIR data that maintained the chromatic ordering of Flickr image
•The Flickr NIR image is a pseudo color photo of the Pillars of Creation
•The processing software used to produce the Flickr photo was: PixInsight and Affinity Photo 2