July 19, 2008
On your birthday, the Earth completed another orbit — 584 million miles traveled since your last celebration.
M16 and the Eagle Nebula
Birthday · July 19, 2008
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APOD published July 19, 2008. Credit: Panther Observatory. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Young star cluster M16 is surrounded by natal clouds of cosmic dust and glowing gas also known as The Eagle Nebula. This beautifully detailed image of the region includes fantastic shapes made famous in well-known Hubble Space Telescope close-ups of the starforming complex. Described as elephant trunks or Pillars of Creation, dense, dusty columns rising near the center are light-years in length but are gravitationally contracting to form stars. Energetic radiation from the cluster stars erodes material near the tips, eventually exposing the embedded new stars. Extending from the upper left edge of the nebula is another dusty starforming column known as the Fairy of Eagle Nebula. M16 and the Eagle Nebula lie about 7,000 light-years away, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).
Image credit: Panther Observatory