Astro-image of the day: Eagle Nebula

[mckitterick]

This is the image that made me really fall in love with the Hubble telescope:

Click the image to see the story and a movie.

Gorgeous image of this emission nebula, a.k.a. IC 4703 - though it's usually associated with the open cluster, M16. The tops of those "pillars" are star-forming regions. Here's a close-up of one such area:


If you follow the links above by clicking the images, you can get tons more information and images for this amazing object.

Best,
Chris

Comments

[breaca.livejournal.com]

I remember those from my college astronomy class. Seeing those was what made me realize that the massive size of objects/particles in the universe was so immense that I just couldn't quite wrap my brain around it.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. The scale of this is immense! For example, one of those little bumps at the top of one of those pillars is about the size of our entire solar system. There's scale for ya.