Pillars Of Creation

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Slightly over four hundred years ago Galileo Galilel had just begun to improve telescopes with hopes of exploring space (Leonard 135). In the present day, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, more commonly known as NASA, are capable of taking high definition pictures of the endless mysterious in our galaxy and beyond. With these highly advanced telescopes, NASA has been able to photograph many of space’s phenomena’s. One of these photographs was of the nebulae known as the Pillars of Creation. The Pillars of Creation are columns of interstellar gas and dust, which also have stars being formed within them. Due to NASA’s improvements of the telescope, it is now possible to view and examine this nebula. According to Douglas Leonard, …show more content…

Cheseaux originally discovered the star cluster within the nebula. Around twenty years later, Messier famously discovered the nebulosity surrounding the star cluster. The image of this nebula was originally captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, and was then re-captured about twenty years. The newest image captured by this telescope shows any transformations of these pillars and also provides a sharper image of the Eagle Nebula. The first picture, which was captured in 1995, quickly became very popular as it shows one of spaces many wonders. The image is so popular that “it has appeared on postage stamps, T-shirts and pillows, and even made the rounds in television shows and movies” (Redd). Then, in 2015, this nebula was revisited and was then captured through a new camera called Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed in 2009 and wasn’t available for the first image. This new camera captured the image with infrared technology. This newly instated technology made the pillars to be fairly transparent, which allows astronomers to study the pillars with a new perspective. The new image confirmed scientist’s beliefs that stars were being created within the pillars. Due to the infrared technology, scientists were able to discover many long jets that were created by several protostar systems. These jets are evidence of stars being “born” and were only …show more content…

Even though this has never been seen, the pillars are still known as a “stellar nursery” according to Jake Hebert, an astronomer and a writer for the Institute of Creation Research. Herbert claims that the stars within the nebula are so large in size that they should have used up all of their nuclear energy within ten million years, and thus should already be “dead” by now. However the fact that these stars are still burning and are still very bright is ample evidence that they were “born” or created recently. Although there is evidence that stars are being created within this nebula, there is also evidence that this nebula is being destroyed. Many astronomers believe that this nebula has actually already been destroyed and no longer exists. Since these pillars are located seven thousand light years from Earth, it takes light seven thousand years to travel to where we can observe it. This means that when we observe the pillars, we are really looking seven thousand years into the past. Although we can see them still intact with our telescopes, “the pillars don’t exist, and they were destroyed more than a thousand years ago” (Diaz). A supernova that exploded rough six thousand years ago is the main culprit to the destruction of these pillars. Astronomers can see the supernova advancing towards the pillars, but we will not be able to witness these pillars being destroyed for a thousand

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