A new view of the Pillars of Creation gives further clues to its gassy demise
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revisited one of its most iconic and popular images: the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation. (NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team/)If you went to a planetarium as a kid, have some vestige interest in the stars, or have once Googled “iconic space pics,” I’d confidently bet five dollars you’ve laid eyes on the Pillars of Creation. The structure lies roughly 5,700 light-years away in the Eagle Nebula and features immense, thick tendrils of illuminated gas and dust. Back here on Earth, an image of this beastly beauty is perhaps the most famous shots ever snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope in its almost 30 years of operation.NASA released the classic photograph back in 1995, which captured the 5-light-year-tall structure in visible light. All of that energy-packed gas makes the area an active star-forming region—a stellar nursery, hence its name. Now, NASA just revealed...