The European Southern Observatory just released this gorgeous image of the Eagle Nebula:
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Yegads. Click to embiggen, or download a VAST version (149 MB tiff!).
The Eagle is a sprawling cloud of gas and dust that is actively forming stars — it was made famous by the Hubble image of the dark clouds in the center which were called The Pillars of Creation. This ESO image was taken with a 2.2 meter telescope in Chile, and covers an impressive area of the sky equal to the size of the full Moon! The colors here are false, the image is in the near infrared (though the press release does not state what other filters were used, frustratingly [UPDATE: I have been informed by an inside source that the filters used were blue, visible (yellowish), near-IR, and one that just lets through a specific wavelength strongly emitted by hydrogen, called Hα]).
The nebula is 7000 light years away, but easily visible in small telescopes. I remember observing it when I was a lad, using my 25 cm telescope. It was just a fuzzy blob through the eyepiece, competing with the street light down the block a bit (which was octillions of times fainter but a hundred trillion times closer). It just goes to show you what you can do with the right equipment.
And remember as you pass you eyes over the lovely sheets and filaments of gas in the Eagle: you’re seeing stars in the very act of being born, some with their cores just beginning to fuse hydrogen into helium, others still a million years away from that, and others yet already stable stars and well on their way to exploding as supernovae. It’s birth, life, and death, all against a gloriously displayed background of gas dynamics and quantum mechanics writ large.
My thanks to Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha, and Frida for the title inspiration.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
And I dream I can spread my wings…
July 16th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
When one comes to think of it, stuff like this, and the constellations too — they are classic examples of pareidolia.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Magnificent!
July 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
That is now my new desktop background!
July 16th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
…
(speechless)
July 16th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Yeah, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines……
J/P=?
July 16th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Eagle? That looks much much more like an octopus, someone get PZ on the phone!
July 16th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Speaking of pictures, what’s the status of that Celestron imaging contest in which you’re the judge?
July 16th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
The Professor may be a bit hard to find, I believe he was recently xpeld.
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Phil, you’re back in full form. We likeeee.
Hmmm, is it me or is your pareidolic sense just too infectious? I think I see a leaping jaguar in the middle of the nebula. And why, by the way, is it called Eagle, when it looks more like an overturned crab? Not that there’s anything inelegant about an overturned crab…..
July 16th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
This was always one of my favorites, mostly because of the close-up, if somewhat fuzzy, black and white image of the “star queen” dust formation in the center, as published in Burnham’s Celestial Handbook, vol. 3, pp 1786(!).
July 16th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
[...] … to see images of a nebula 7000 light years [...]
July 17th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Charles Boyer @ #2,
A true and simple revelation. I never saw it that way before.
July 17th, 2009 at 5:41 am
A little ABBA love from the BA? We share a “guilty pleasure.”
July 17th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Mama Mia!
July 17th, 2009 at 7:27 am
I downloaded the VAST version, just to see how detailed it would be, but my computer didn’t appreciate the awesome vastness. Either that, or it found itself too insignificatn when faced with such enormity of space, and promptly decided to crash itself to wipe its memory of what it had seen.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:28 am
fascinating picture.
July 17th, 2009 at 8:13 am
14. Eskil Says:
I downloaded the VAST version, just to see how detailed it would be, but my computer didn’t appreciate the awesome vastness. Either that, or it found itself too insignificatn when faced with such enormity of space, and promptly decided to crash itself to wipe its memory of what it had seen.
Total Perspective Vortex?
J/P=?
July 17th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Is that considered small for an amateur scope?? When I was a lad, I was given a 70mm Tasco. Ugh! It’s a wonder I’m still interested in astronomy after that fiasco.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:09 am
“…and I dreamed I can spread my wings.
Flying high, high,
like a bird in the sky…”
Yep, longtime ABBA fan here!
July 17th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Am I dreaming or is it all real? This now serves as my desktop wallpaper! I’m off to listen to the soaring melodies of “Eagle”.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Phil, you saw this through your 25 cm telescope when you were a kid? 1/4 of a meter? about 10 inches? that’s a nice scope!
July 21st, 2009 at 1:55 am
Thanks for the comment about the filters! Actually, the 3 filters are in the visible range: B (blue), V (green) and R (red), without near infrared. We’ve updated the page to reflect this:
http://www.eso.org/gallery/v/ESOPIA/Nebulae/phot-26a-09-hires.tif.html