Where they rise from
The three pillars grow out of one broad cloud of the same cold gas and dust. In infrared, Hubble sees through much of it to the stars behind.
Media example
Read-only showcaseThe Pillars of Creation, seen four ways
One telescope image whose every part opens the same place as Hubble and Webb saw it, side by side.
100%
Everything on this image
The same content as the picture, as text: every part and what it says when you open it.
The tallest pillar
About four light-years from base to tip - columns of cold hydrogen and dust, being eroded by the light of hot young stars nearby, while new stars form inside them.
- Length
- about 4 light-years
- Made of
- cold molecular hydrogen and dust
- In
- the Eagle Nebula, Messier 16, in Serpens
- Distance
- 6,500-7,000 light-years
The middle pillar
In visible light it is a dark column. Webb's near-infrared camera sees through much of the dust to the newborn stars at its edges.
The smallest pillar
In mid-infrared, Webb sees the dust itself glow and the stars almost disappear - the same shape, seen in its own warmth.
Fingers at the tips
The finger-like shapes at the top are larger than our Solar System. Each is the shadow of an evaporating gaseous globule, a knot of gas dense enough to shield what lies behind it - and an incubator of new stars.
The light that carves them
Ultraviolet light from hot, young stars above the top of the picture boils gas off the pillars' surfaces. The pillars stand because their dense tips shade the gas behind them.
About this picture
The picture under this example is Hubble's visible-light image of 2014. The name comes from a phrase in an 1857 sermon by Charles Spurgeon. Image: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), 2014. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
More examples like this
Paintings and photographs read detail by detail, with galleries and film.
