Description: “Pillars of Creation” is a photograph taken by the Hubble Telescope in 1995. It shows elephant trunk like columns of interstellar gas from the Eagle Nebula (7000 light years away). The reason they are called the pillars of creation is because the gas and dust pictured is in the process of forming/creating new stars. It was named one of the top 10 photographs taken by the Hubble.
Further Facts:
*The pillars are composed of molecular hydrogen that is being eroded from the ultra-violet light of nearby “hot” stars. The pillar on the left is 4 light years in length. The little finger-like things on the very end of the clouds are bigger than our entire solar system.
*Because they are 7000 light years away we are viewing them as they were 7000 years ago, there has been evidence of a supernova explosion in the nearby region that would have destroyed the clouds about 6000 years ago, meaning we will see them being destroyed about 1000 years from now.
*If you could go back about 4.5 billion years and watch our own solar system form you would see a sight similar to this.
Further Reading:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/hubb-16.html
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/birth/proto.html
HaplofromNexus 