More work on this image has revealed some of the gaseous secrets of the Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation.
The Pillars of Creation, captured in great detail by the Hubble Space Telescope, is an iconic feature of the Eagle Nebula. The faint blue colors in the bottom of this image represent oxygen, red is sulfur, and green represents both nitrogen and hydrogen. The pillars are bathed in the scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young stars. The winds from these stars are slowly eroding the towers of gas and dust.
Stretching roughly 4 to 5 light-years, the Pillars of Creation are a fascinating but relatively small feature of the entire Eagle Nebula, which spans 70 by 55 light-years. The nebula, discovered in 1745 by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux, is located 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens.
The Eagle Nebula can be spotted through a small telescope and is best viewed during July in the northern hemisphere. A large telescope and optimal viewing conditions are necessary to resolve the Pillars of Creation, or in this case, a lot of imaging with the ZWO Seestar S50, stacking and post-processing in Siril, denoising and scaling with Topaz, and finishing in Photoshop.
