Pillars of Creation

The Pillars of Creation are towering columns of gas and dust within the Eagle Nebula (M16), made famous by the original Hubble image in 1995. The James Webb Space Telescope’s 2022 revisit revealed the structures in unprecedented detail using near-infrared light.

The tallest pillar reaches approximately 4 light-years from base to tip. These dense formations are active stellar nurseries — stars are forming inside them, and the tips are being eroded by intense ultraviolet radiation from young stars in the surrounding region. This process, called photoevaporation, creates the wispy, gaseous appearance at the column edges.

The reddish wavy lines visible in the Webb image are jets from newly forming protostars. When a protostar accumulates enough mass, it periodically ejects material along its poles — these jets ionize the surrounding gas and appear as bright streaks.

The pillars are predicted to be fully dispersed within roughly 3 million years as star formation in the region continues.