All the secrets of the Pillars of Creation are here. Multiple perspectives will take you closer to this wonder of the universe.

In this photo, there are many cosmic landscapes captured by the Hubble Telescope, two of which are more famous. The spot on the left is one of the two photos released by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2015 to celebrate the 15th anniversary of its launch.

And the one in the red frame on the right is the most famous creation of the Eagle Nebula. Pillar of Life.

The Eagle Nebula is located in the Serpens constellation 7,000 light-years away. It was discovered as early as 1745 and is listed at No. 16 in Messier's catalog, so it is also called M16. Viewed from a distance, its shape looks like an eagle about to break through the sky, hence its name.

The Eagle Nebula is a typical open star cluster. The so-called open star cluster is a collection of hundreds to thousands of stars. The star density is relatively low and the gravitational connection between them is weak. They are usually distributed within a diameter of less than 10 light-years. However, the Eagle Nebula is an exception, and its scope is larger. In contrast to relatively dense globular clusters, open clusters contain very young stars.

There are more than 8,000 such young stars in the Eagle Nebula, and they form this spectacle in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way. The Eagle Nebula has an apparent magnitude of 6.0 and is the faintest object visible to the naked eye under good weather conditions, so it is usually invisible to us. Its shape can be easily seen through high-quality binoculars or a small telescope. However, no one could have imagined that when astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe it, they would see its amazing side.

In 1995, in order to study the origin of stars, Arizona State University astronomers Jeff Hurst and Paul Scovin pointed the Hubble Telescope at the Eagle Nebula. . They never imagined that one of the most successful space photos in history would be born from this.

They used four different cameras on the Hubble Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 to take 32 images and then stitched them together. We know that the photos returned by the Hubble Telescope are in black and white and require scientists to render colors. They rendered hydrogen ions in green, oxygen in blue, and sulfur in red. Finally, a photo of the Pillars of Creation with added color was created.

They were also shocked when they first got this photo - this is normal, who can not be shocked by the majesty of the Pillars of Creation! Sure enough, after being published in the Picture of the Day column on NASA's official website on April 6, the Pillars of Creation undoubtedly became a classic among images of the human universe, making countless people feel suffocated by it.

In addition to being shocked, astronomers also started to analyze it. In this photo, we can see 3 huge "pillars". According to scientists, each of them can reach several light-years in length, and the total width is about 4-5 light-years.

The reason why it is called the Pillars of Creation is that it is a nursery for stars. A large number of stars are formed here by absorbing dust dispersed in interstellar space. A large part of them are among the most massive. O-type main sequence stars, and at least one star has a mass of more than 80 times that of the sun.

In 2015, NASA used the Hubble Space Telescope to release a retaken photo of the Pillars of Creation. This time the shooting range was wider, and they also included the "base" of the Pillars of Creation in the mirror. , showing a more majestic Pillar of Creation.

Astronomers tell us that there are undercurrents surging in this area, hiding common but thrilling secret contests in the universe, among which three forces are particularly powerful:

At present, , the third force seems to have the upper hand. From a comparison of two photos of the Pillars of Creation in 2015 and 1995, astronomers discovered that the largest pillar had a powerful jet that caused it to grow wildly for more than 100 billion kilometers in these 20 years. This distance is nearly 1,000 times the distance between the sun and the earth. At the same time, by dividing this distance by time, astronomers speculate that its diffusion speed has reached an astonishing 200 kilometers per second!

The two photos of the Pillars of Creation released in 1995 and 2015 were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in the visible light range. However, visible light is only a very narrow segment of electromagnetic waves and has certain limitations. When we observe using different wavelengths, we will see different Pillars of Creation.

Compared with visible light, infrared light has a longer wavelength, so it is less blocked and can penetrate heavy fog.

When astronomers use infrared bands to observe the Pillars of Creation, the dim light of newborn stars hidden behind the dense interstellar dust is no longer restricted and exposed to human eyes. From the picture, we can see that many stars that are not visible in the visible light pictures of the Pillars of Creation are exposed in the infrared band, which also confirms scientists' speculation about the identity of the Eagle Nebula's stellar nursery.

This is the Pillars of Creation captured in the X-ray band by the Chandra X-ray Telescope

It can be seen that this photo is based on Hubble's photo, but Through X-ray observations, we can see more invisible celestial objects in the visible light range. The light spots in the picture are all stars, and their colors increase according to the intensity of X-rays, corresponding to red, green and blue respectively. At the same time, the brown gas clouds are also rendered more densely.

In 2007, astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to photograph parts of the Pillars of Creation in the infrared band.

As we all know, infrared light can detect temperature. In this photo, astronomers found that the red area is warmer than expected.

The Hubble Space Telescope has broken through human imagination time and time again, and can even help astronomers build a 3D simulation scene of the Pillars of Creation with its powerful observation capabilities and massive observation data. Such work was something that astronomers in 1995 could not even dream of doing.

From this animated picture we can see that although the previous pictures give us the illusion that the three pillars are on the same plane, in fact they are far apart. Although the largest pillar reaches a height of about 5 light years, the depth of the entire Pillar of Creation far exceeds this number.

Although it is called "Creation", this huge stellar nursery may not be able to protect itself and is facing the fate of destruction.

As we have introduced, the stars in the universe are all veterans of "burning bridges across rivers" and "killing donkeys by removing millstones". During the formation process, they greedily devoured the surrounding gas and continued to grow and develop. After they light up, they will begin to radiate powerful stellar winds, blowing away the interstellar dust rushing towards them, and clearing out an empty area for themselves.

As mentioned earlier, in 2007, NASA used the Spitzer Space Telescope to discover that some areas of the Pillars of Creation had higher temperatures. They suspected: This is the trace of a supernova explosion. We know that the power of supernova explosions is far beyond what these newborn stars can match. Once a supernova occurs, the Pillars of Creation will disintegrate from the inside faster and dissipate into the universe.

However, just when people were sweating over this wonder of the universe, astronomers announced that this observation may be an error. According to astronomers' observations of the Pillars of Creation over the years, although what we see on Earth is what it looked like 7,000 years ago, it can be inferred that even today, it has not been destroyed.

However, destruction and collapse are the destined fate of the Pillars of Creation. Judging from the current situation, it will slowly "evaporate" in 100,000-1 million years.

Of course, we are not yet sure how long the stars in the Pillars of Creation live. Maybe one day, one of them will reach the end of its life and become a supernova. By that time, the Pillar of Creation will probably be destroyed in advance.