Eagle Nebula 24x24 (16x16) Poster

Recommended size to fit a standard frame: 24x24 inches (original size: 16x16 inches at 300 PPI, 23 MP). Many other sizes available. Click 'Customize it!' on the right. This 1995 photo of eerie, dark pillar-like structures has appeared on magazine covers, postcards and computer desktops worldwide. The pillars are actually columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that serve as incubators for new stars. This dramatic picture from the Hubble telescope shows newborn stars emerging from dense, compact pockets of interstellar gas called evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs). Hubble found the "EGGs," appropriately enough, in the Eagle nebula, a nearby star-forming region 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens. These striking pictures resolve the EGGs at the tip of finger-like features protruding from monstrous columns of cold gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (also called M16). The columns — dubbed "elephant trunks" — protrude from the wall of a vast cloud of molecular hydrogen, like stalagmites rising above the floor of a cavern. Inside the gaseous towers, which are light-years long, the interstellar gas is dense enough to collapse under its own weight, forming young stars that continue to grow as they accumulate more and more mass from their surroundings. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)