The Pillars of Creation might already be gone
The famous Pillars of Creation, located in the Eagle Nebula, are giant towers of gas and dust. Because they are 7,000 light-years away, we see them as they existed in the past. Some astronomers believe a nearby supernova shockwave may have destroyed them 6,000 years ago, but we won't see it happen for another millennium.
The Iconic Towers of the Eagle Nebula
In 1995, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope captured an image that quickly became one of the most recognized astronomical photographs in history. Dubbed the 'Pillars of Creation,' the photograph revealed towering, sculpted columns of interstellar gas and dust rising within the Eagle Nebula, also cataloged as Messier 16 or M16. Located roughly 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens, these majestic spires are vast cosmic structures spanning several light-years in height, with the tallest column stretching approximately four to five light-years from base to tip.
The photograph, composed by astronomers Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen, unveiled intricate details of a stellar nursery that had never been seen before with such clarity. The columns stand inside an active cavity carved out of a much larger molecular cloud. What appeared as smooth, dark silhouettes against a glowing backdrop in older telescopes was revealed to be a dynamic, turbulent environment where newborn stars and dense pockets of matter interact continuously with extreme radiation.
Anatomy of a Stellar Nursery
The Pillars of Creation are composed predominantly of cold molecular hydrogen gas blended with microscopic grains of cosmic dust. They exist because denser knots within the cloud resist the destructive effects of nearby massive, luminous stars belonging to the open cluster NGC 6611. These young, scorching O- and B-type stars unleash fierce torrents of ultraviolet radiation and powerful stellar winds, blowing away less dense gas and sculpting the remaining material into elongated, trunk-like shapes known scientifically as elephant trunks.
Protruding from the edges and tips of the pillars are smaller, finger-like tendrils larger than our entire solar system. Within these protrusions sit dense clumps called evaporating gaseous globules, or EGGs. As the surrounding gas boils away into space under intense stellar ultraviolet light—a process known as photoevaporation—the shielded gas within these globules can collapse under its own gravity to form new protostars. In this sense, the pillars act simultaneously as cradles for brand-new stars and as structures being steadily destroyed by the very stars they help produce.