March 14, 2022
You were born on a tiny world orbiting an ordinary star in an unremarkable galaxy — and yet, the fact that you exist at all is the most...
Star Formation in the Eagle Nebula
Birthday · March 14, 2022
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APOD published March 14, 2022. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Where do stars form? One place, star forming regions known as "EGGs", are being uncovered at the end of this giant pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (M16). Short for evaporating gaseous globules, EGGs are dense regions of mostly molecular hydrogen gas that fragment and gravitationally collapse to form stars. Light from the hottest and brightest of these new stars heats the end of the pillar and causes further evaporation of gas and dust -- revealing yet more EGGs and more young stars. This featured picture was created from exposures spanning over 30 hours with the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in 2014, and digitally processed with modern software by experienced volunteers in Argentina. Newborn stars will gradually destroy their birth pillars over the next 100,000 years or so -- if a supernova doesn't destroy them first.