Explanation:
What lights up this
castle of star formation?
The familiar
Eagle Nebula glows bright in many colors at once.
The
above image is a composite of three of these glowing gas colors.
Pillars of dark dust
nicely outline some of the denser
towers of
star formation.
Energetic light from young massive stars
causes the gas to glow and effectively
boils away part of the
dust and gas from its birth pillar.
Many of these stars will
explode after several million years,
returning most of their elements back to the nebula which formed them.
This process is forming an
open cluster of stars known as
M16.
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